Despite major policy and institutional reforms, substantial and sustained technical and investment support by development partners, there are concerns that agric sector performance is not meeting expectations. This has necessitated an international conference by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan to make scientists adopt researches that will boost small scale farming. DANIEL ESSIET writes that a blueprint is in the offing.
Agricultural growth in Nigeria and the rest of Africa is generally achieved by cultivating more land and mobilising a larger labour force. While in most cases this has yielded average results, farmers have recorded very little improvement in yields with outdated production techniques.
This is despite major policy and institutional reforms, substantial and sustained technical and investment support by a large number of development partners.
To observers, what this reflects is lack of sector coherence and confusion around different research approaches to agricultural development, implementation of research findings and how they are linked with each other.
To address this, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Oyo State gathered agricultural scientists and researchers from over 30 countries for an international conference on Integrated Systems for Sustainable Intensification in Small holder Agriculture. The idea was to stimulate an intellectual forum where strategies would be put in place to ensure improvement in the sector.
As expected, speakers presented strategies and results which they believe will not only meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlined by the United Nations (UN), but have a remarkable impact on the lives and livelihoods of small producers.
They included developing appropriate and new technologies, ensuring stable supplies of nutritionally adequate food and natural resource management and environmental protection.
The general suggestion was that combining strong commercial policy with effective development policy will significantly advance food security objectives.
Director-General, Biodiversity International, Ann Tutwiler, who spoke during the event, acknowledged that advances in agricultural science and technology (S&T) have contributed to remarkable increases in food production.
Tutwiler, however, explained that the sector faced a serious challenge in the attempt to increase production, especially of nutrient-rich foods, which caused environmental degradation .
She advocated for a greater implementation of farming systems, which will simultaneously address multiple problems including food security, nutrition security and improving ecosystems.
She challenged participants to focus on synergies rather than trade-offs when taking a systems approach to meet multiple goals. “It requires, importantly, bringing together different disciplines … and it requires different units at the farm level, at the system level, communities and nations to work together. In short it requires us to … pat our heads, rub our stomachs, walk and chew gum at the same time,” she said.
Tutwiler then gave some examples of various ways that Biodiversity International research is showing results, working at different levels.
She highlighted that work in Ecuador at the field level, where using mixtures of variety of beans, has reduced pest and disease incidences and increased farmers’ yields up to 32 per cent .
She also talked about research in Costa Rica, where a reduction in the incidence of coffee borer beetle by using diversified landscapes round the coffee plots was achieved.
Director, Research Programme on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics) under the aegis of Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), Dr. Kwesi Atta-Krah, said considerable progress has been made towards increasing food production through researches, but much is yet to be done. To reverse this, a conference was organised to offer a platform for sharing of experiences and research results to assist farmers and local researchers. It was also meant to address challenges facing agriculture and food systems, and profer solutions to tackle poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.
Food security,Atta-Krah stressed, needs a tailored approach and that the development of technology is more suitable for Africa, and uniting the research systems will be a path worth exploring.
Atta-Krah acknowledged that the suitability of agricultural production systems is ultimately a function of agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions, which together determine profitability.
He, therefore, called on the government to embrace the use of science in order to transform its agricultural sector.
Executive Director, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, Dr Yemi Akinbamijo, said the continent was facing hurdles in transforming research output into greater agricultural productivity, adding that system research has to be improved and implemented in a way that it will impact on the livelihoods of rural farmers.
Akinbamijo urged African leaders to prioritise and provide the political framework to reverse a historical food and nutrition challenge associated with the continent.
Underlining the importance of agriculture as enormous and promising, given its diverse endowment with suitable climatic conditions that favours production of various crops, Akinbamijo maintained that the continent was not harnessing and exploring sustainable production technologies to produce more foods and fibers to feed the ever growing population.
He noted that while African governments are using economic diversification to drive growth, much of it is achieved through agriculture production and agribusiness which generate much of the gross domestic product (GDP) in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Akinbamijo contented that the development case for investing in agriculture as means of livelihood is clear, adding that growth in the agriculture sector is effective at reducing poverty.
One of the best ways for Nigeria to promote food security and tap into the economic potential, he said, is to expand agriculture investment, food production and remove obstacles from every aspect of farming business, enable farmers to sell more and support livelihoods.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) CGIAR Consortium, Dr. Frank Rijsberman, said: “The conference focused on one of the trickiest problems in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It’s not just about coming up with single technologies, but how they can come together to provide opportunities for farmers, give them access to markets, and maintain the ecosystems and the soils that provide the basis for them. A key element of this is a research to address yield gaps that exist in several major commodities produced within farming systems.”
He continued: “We cannot simply tread familiar paths in response to these statistics. Over the next few years we will be joined by our partners to redouble our focus on the needs of women and young people, extend our efforts to improve dietary quality among the poor and vulnerable, and intensify our work on climate-smart agriculture – all recent additions to our research agenda.”
Rijsberman, also noted that he was impressed by the dynamic presentations and self-confidence of the young graduates in IITA’s Youth Agripreneur programme.
His words: “With unemployment of young Nigerian graduates as high as 60-70 per cent, this programme aims to show that there is a future for young Africans in agriculture, that there is viable employment and an attractive career in catfish aquaculture, in soymilk production, yam sucker farms and cassava bread production.”
IITA Director -General (DG), Dr Nteranya Sanginga, similarly emphasised the importance of systems research.
He called for continued efforts, declaring: “We must develop and promote improved and nutritious crop varieties of Africa’s major staples, as well as innovative practices on natural resources management, and innovations on integrated farming systems towards sustainable intensification of agriculture.”
Sanginga, said the creation of business opportunities for unemployed youth in the agricultural sector is a major initiative of IITA.
According to him, the programme is capable of addressing youth unemployment and the opportunities of an agrarian economy.
The IITA Youth Agripreneurs, he said, is a landmark programme that provides youth from diverse disciplines training and opportunities to engage in agricultural business or entrepreneurship.
Sanginga emphasised that the annual return on investment in the fish ponds managed by the IITA Youth Agripreneurs was about $400,000.
Sanginga said youth will play a major role in furthering the growth of agriculture.
According to him, IITA is determined to give young farmers more recognition and support them by giving them access to market information and training in modern farming practice to enable them improve their livelihoods.
“All over Africa, many young people are migrating to cities in search of business opportunities, leaving behind an increasingly ageing population.
“The challenge is to create business opportunities for productive activity in agriculture and non-farming enterprises for increased food security, and for combating youth unemployment,” Sanginga said.
While participating in the Humid tropics conference on systems research, CGIAR top managers Frank Rijsberman and Ann Tutwiler visited IITA’s Business Incubation Platform (BIP). They were accompanied by IITA Board member, Roel Merckx and IWMI’s Africa Director Timothy Williams.
The agripreneurs promote agriculture among other young people in the region through peer education, training, and demonstration on agricultural bestpractices and business skills in value chain developments.
CGIAR CEO Rijsberman congratulated the IITA for “pioneering the agripreneur approach” and underlined that a precise investment model on integrating the challenge of youth unemployment into research on food security had not yet been established in the consortium.
Bioversity DG, Tutwiler, was particularly pleased that the Agripreneurs were working on nutritional cash crops, vegetables, soy milk, and investing in fish farming. “When we decided in CGIAR on our main crops, we might have forgotten the nutritional values that vegetables and fish can bring to a diet – not only to improve food deficiencies, but also as a measure against obesity,” she said.
