The Nation Newspaper

Category: Agriculture

  • ‘Biofuels helpful to farmers’

    Production of bio-fuel from crops will boost farm produce, the Director, Africa Region Cassava Adding Value to Africa (CAVA), Dr Kola Adebayo, has said.

    He said apart from increasing domestic energy supply, bio-fuels production would induce many farmers to expand their acreage and provide a ready market to farmers to sell their agricultural waste to biomass power plants.

    This is because the operators of biomass plants will utilise a wide range of feedstock including agricultural residues, saying the primary feedstock come from rice crop; residues such as rice husk and rice straw, as well as woodchips.

    He said farmers will be encouraged to prepare their trash to be gathered as biomass feedstock, adding that there are resources, particularly residues from forests, wood processing and agriculture which biomass industries can use to produce electricity that will cater to the needs of the industries, in both urban and rural communities. He said this would provide an opportunity for local farmers to make money.

    Urging the government to encourage more biomass-based projects by introducing a number of policies and schemes to boost the industry, Adebayo said biomass projects are part of an initiative to meet the clean energy needs and reduce chronic power shortages and carbon emissions.

    He urged the government to introduce industry-friendly policies, such as feed-in tariff policy to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies by offering long-term contracts to renewable energy producers based on the cost of generation of each technology.

    He implored the government to provide project developers with investment incentives, guaranteed minimum prices, power purchase agreements with the utility grid, exemptions pertaining to the import of equipment and certain tax credits.

    Adebayo said there would be challenges associated with meeting feedstock demand, and in some cases, overcoming technical impediments to efficient energy production, adding that there is the challenge of educating and organising the farming community to collect the biomass.

    He said this will be as a result of a general lack of understanding of the fundamental drivers of the industry’s economic viability, which increases the perceived level of risk.

  • Farmers lament high cost of production

    The high prices of farming input are negatively affecting the capacity of small farmers to prepare adequately for the cropping season.

    The Programme Coorodinator, Farmers Development Union (FADU), Mr Victor Olowe, told The Nation that input financing has become a problem yearly, as the government’s efforts have failed to address the issue even with the promise of subsiding farmers costs by 50 per cent.

    High transportation costs and market access are two key issues faced by vegetable and root crop farmers. While many farmers were productive and harvested their produce in commercial quantities, the unavailability of markets was a big drawback.

    Another challenge was the high cost of transportation of having to spend at least two to three days in urban areas waiting for their produce to be sold and in the process, some of the ripe tomatos get spoilt.

    He said the food system is highly fuel and transport dependent. This makes the production system less secure and food less affordable.

    Meanwhile, many poor farmers who cannot afford machinery, fuels and commercial farm inputs find themselves at a disadvantage in the food economy.

    As a result, thousands of farmers suffer great losses.

    Olowe said farmers have to slash labour costs dramatically to have any chance of saving operations.

    He said labour costs was affecting farming operations nationwide.

    Early this year, fish farmers decried the continuous increase in cost of fish feeds in the market while the market price of fish falls yearly, leading to exit of many fish farms.

    According to them, the dependence on imported feeds has stimulated wide price fluctuation, leading to price inflation of feedstuff.

    At present, a bag of Coppen feeds, an imported feed, costs between N4,000 and N5,200 per bag as compared to the price of a live fish, sold for about N480.

    The government only regulates the commodity markets through import controls and price support through subsidies or direct government purchases and other policy instruments designed to support the feed manufacturing industry.

    Under the Industrial Development (Income Tax Relief) Act, the manufacture of animal feeds was placed on the list of pioneer industries; this ensures a five-year tax holiday to new feed millers entering the industry and aimed at stimulating investment in the animal feed mill industry.

    Prices are fairly consistent with product quality and for some items pegged to those specifications that are most likely to vary, for instance the moisture levels for grains or crude protein levels for fish meals.

    The larger feed mills maintain laboratories that check raw material quality and monitor the feed manufacturing process, to help maintain the quality of feedstuff.

    Importation of feeds, according to fish farmers, is the major cause of the increasing price of fish feeds in the market, whereas importers of feeds attribute the price increase to the corrupt nature of law enforcement agents.

    President, Lagos State Catfish Association of Nigeria, Rotimi Omodehin, said the high cost of feeds have hindered many farming business and closed many farming enterprises.

    He urged the government to invest in animal feeds to help improve the productivity level of farmers.

    “Building of feeds mill will help the farmers, and farmers are willing to patronise government feeds because individual retailer’s price is killing the farmers,” he said.

    He reiterated that subsidy in agriculture is very important and removal by the government is to the detriment of the average farmer.

    A livestock farmer, Temitope Odetola, said the government had neglected livestock farming and little or no funds were made available for the farmers.

    He added that the small-scale farmers find it hard to get capital and bank loan is out-of-reach for them.

  • Addressing the needs of poor women farmers

    Addressing the needs of poor women farmers

    Women play a crucial role in the rural economy. Empowering them is crucial to ending hunger and poverty. Daniel Essiet  reports.

    Mrs. Alice Thompson, a small scale farmer who lives in Akwa Ibom State, plants vegetables, maize and other crops. She sells her farm produce and resorts to self-help in processing her cassava tubers to garri before selling. In all these, she decries poor returns.

    Her story is not different from that of Mrs. Affiong Bassey, a farmer in one of the farm settlements scattered on the outskirt of the state. She sells her farm produce to travellers on the expressway because of their perishable nature. This, she said, often results in lower returns, and fails to complement for the time and labour put into nurturing and harvesting the produce.

    Thompson and Bassey are mere archetypes of the women farmers, who constitute 70 per cent of the country’s agricultural workforce and produce 80 per cent of the country’s food requirement, yet most of them lack access to almost everything that could make farming worthwhile and gainful. With hoes and cutlasses, most of the women farmers still engage in farming practices that are already outdated.

    They are not only susceptible to the whims and caprices of weather; they are faced with challenges such as lack of funds, inadequate agriculture information, inability to preserve farm produce, and poor access to the market. Others are lack of information about crop production, pest control, treatment of animals, economic and health information, among others.

    Experts say their situation is one of the many indices of the country’s dwindling fortune in the agricultural sector.

    The Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Uyo, Prof Ini Akpabio, said rural women are vital agents for economic change and the government has to taken actions to enable their full participation in improving food security.

    Despite their contributions to the food supply, women farmerss are often undervalued and overlooked in agricultural development strategies.

    In Nigeria, rural life continues to change and women are bearing much of the responsibility for rural economic transformation.

    Akpabio said women are the backbone of rural communities, working both on, and off the farm.

    He said the rural women play multiple roles that are key to maintaining farms, families and communities and it is important that they be supported to produce more food.

    He said there are a lot of programmes targeted at empowering female farmers, stressing, however, that politicians were taking advantage of such opportunities instead of the real farmers.

    Also, Dr Elizabeth Oluwalana of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, said women play a major role in the production, processing and marketing of food crops, yet they are often the most chronically poor members of rural communities

    She said women are constrained in access to land, inputs, such as seeds and fertiliser; new varieties and technologies and functional agricultural extension service.

    Particularly on land tenure, she noted that women are suffering because communities do not recognise their customary rights to land.

    This, she explained, jeopardised their long term chances of involving in food production as such they withdraw their labour in response. In some areas of the country, widows are expected to work in their husbands’ fields. Widows lost their rights to on communal land on the death of their husbands.

    To her access to land is not enough. She said women need to be equipped with fertiliser and improved seeds to maximise the productivity of their land.

    She said fertiliser and seed vouchers should be targeted to small farmers with explicit efforts to reach women.

    Where women do not have enough cash to pay for fertiliser, there should be incentives targeted at the poor one to enable them buy at a lower price.

    She suggested encouraging women to introduce high-value cash crops into their cropping systems, whereby they pay for fertiliser for their food crops with cash-crop receipts.

    For poor female farmers living in the rural areas, she said building a better life takes energy, hard work and commitment day after day.

    They raise chickens, an important source of both income and protein, plant vegetables to improve the availability of nutritious food in their communities. These little activities empower women to move out of poverty and to achieve better living standards. These projects foster their entrepreneurial capacity to ensure their food and nutrition security and build thriving rural economies.

  • ‘Youths involvement in agric’ll check unemployment’

    The engagement of youths in agriculture will reduce unemployment, an Agri-business Consultant, Michael Oladimeji, has said

    He said in Ikole, Ekiti State, that the introduction of entrepreneurship- related courses in tertiary institutions would make 50 per cent of the nation’s youth to become self employed.

    He said the three tiers of government needed to provide necessary incentives that would encourage youths to engage in mechanised farming.

    “Prompt and adequate funding of the agricultural sector in addition to full implementation of annual budgetary allocation under close supervision will pave the way for success in the sector,” he said.

    He suggested that tertiary institutions should have a Department of Entrepreneurship and Skills Acquisition where candidates could be trained.

    “Graduates produced from the department will surely be self-reliant and employ others when established.

    “A special trust fund can be opened for fresh graduates with entrepreneurship certificates to establish businesses,’’ he said.

    The consultant lamented the high rate of youth unemployment and called on youths not to take it as an excuse.

    “Youths should take it as a challenge and engage in meaningful ventures that will improve their living standard,’’ he said.

  • ‘Biofuels helpful to farmers’

    ‘Biofuels helpful to farmers’

    Production of bio-fuel from crops will boost farm produce, the Director, Africa Region Cassava Adding Value to Africa (CAVA), Dr Kola Adebayo, has said.

    He said apart from increasing domestic energy supply, bio-fuels production would induce many farmers to expand their acreage and provide a ready market to farmers to sell their agricultural waste to biomass power plants.

    This is because the operators of biomass plants will utilise a wide range of feedstock including agricultural residues, saying the primary feedstock come from rice crop; residues such as rice husk and rice straw, as well as woodchips.

    He said farmers will be encouraged to prepare their trash to be gathered as biomass feedstock, adding that there are resources, particularly residues from forests, wood processing and agriculture which biomass industries can use to produce electricity that will cater to the needs of the industries, in both urban and rural communities. He said this would provide an opportunity for local farmers to make money.

    Urging the government to encourage more biomass-based projects by introducing a number of policies and schemes to boost the industry, Adebayo said biomass projects are part of an initiative to meet the clean energy needs and reduce chronic power shortages and carbon emissions.

    He urged the government to introduce industry-friendly policies, such as feed-in tariff policy to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies by offering long-term contracts to renewable energy producers based on the cost of generation of each technology.

    He implored the government to provide project developers with investment incentives, guaranteed minimum prices, power purchase agreements with the utility grid, exemptions pertaining to the import of equipment and certain tax credits.

    Adebayo said there would be challenges associated with meeting feedstock demand, and in some cases, overcoming technical impediments to efficient energy production, adding that there is the challenge of educating and organising the farming community to collect the biomass.

    He said this will be as a result of a general lack of understanding of the fundamental drivers of the industry’s economic viability, which increases the perceived level of risk.

  • Ogun council woos investors with land offer

    Ijebu North East Local Government, Ogun State is wooing small and medium scale investors with an offer of affordable land.

    It is leveraging on its fertile and large unutilised land, giving to genuine agricultural entrepreneurs.

    The Chairman, Chief Femi Odufowokan, made this known during the distribution of empowerment tools and cash to artisans, farmers and women, among others, to mark his first year in office.

    He said over 15 hectares of land had been donated by the people of the area for small and medium scale investors in piggery, poultry and fishery, among others, expressing the hope that if the opportunity is well utilised, it would open up the area for development, boost the Internally Generated Revenue(IGR) of the Council and create jobs for youths.

    He said aside wooing investors, youths and local farmers are equally encouraged to go into agric-business and adopt modern farming techniques to increase yield, as well as their income.

    Odufowokan added: “We have mapped out land for investors in piggery, poultry, fishery business; forms are out for interested investors; it is free of charge for small and medium scale would – be – investors in agric-business.

    “Also, we have been training our farmers on modern farming techniques and over 300 of them have benefited from this. Similarly, the local government’s poultry at Oke-Eri has been resuscitated and equipped with 600 point-of-lay birds and revenue realised from sales of eggs has been tremendous.”

  • ‘More efforts required to combat cassava diseases in Africa’

    In response to rapidly spreading strains of cassava disease, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) are calling for increased investments to prevent further crop damage. The cassava root is a key crop for both regional subsistence and trade.

    After a meeting of 70 regional cassava professionals in Nairobi, Kenya, it was determined that a minimum of $100 million is needed to continue the efforts of the EU funded, FAO coordinated Regional Cassava Initiative. Over a four-year period the Initiative improved food security and repaired damaged yields in the areas affected by cassava disease. The project is set to end in October 2013 without further investment.

    Seven countries including Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda worked with the Initiative to offer cassava farmers disease resistant plants and clean materials. Although these efforts curbed the effects of Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD), Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) continues to spread, threatening the food security of the 135 million people in the region.

    Without continued funding of the Initiative, CBSD is likely to spread into Nigeria, the biggest cassava-producing nation in Africa.

    Hunger level in Africa still alarming, says 2013 Global Hunger Index report.

  • Expert: 1.7m tonnes sugarcane production target achievable

    In expert, Prof Gbadebo Olaoye, is optimistic that the expansion of domestic sugar cane production to 1.7 million tonnes by 2018, will be achieved.

    Speaking with The Nation, Olaoye who is the Head of the Sugar Research Institute, University of Ilorin, said tremendous effort was ongoing to improve domestic sugarcane production of 65,000 tonnes with new high yields varieties.

    The United Nation’s Common Fund for Commodities had given $1.6 million (about N246 million) for a research in Ivory Coast and Nigeria to test various species of sugarcane in an effort to boost production.

    He said his institute was reviewing the characteristics of potential sugarcane varieties, with the aim of increasing productivity and profitability for the industry.

    Currently, Nigeria consumes an estimated 1.45 million tonnes of sugar, with demand projected to grow rapidly in the coming years.

    He said the road map put in place by the National Sugar Development Council would stimulate investment in domestic sugar production.

    However, the United States-based Global Agriculture Information Network (GAIN) said it is pessimistic about Nigeria’s prospects of expanding sugar production, describing such plans as “unrealistic.”

    Nigeria plans to increase production of the crop to 1.7 million tonnes annually beginning from 2018 from the current 65 000 tonnes.

    In a report entitled: “Nigeria: Annual Sugar Report 2013,” GAIN pointed out that Nigeria’s objectives required a 22-fold increase in domestic cane sugar production.

    “Nigeria will require long-term massive area expansion and enormous funding in sugar cane production research, as well as long-term investment in public infrastructure and human and material resources,” GAIN stated.

    The report cited recent trade policy proposals the Nigerian government had put forward to stimulate investment in the sugar cane industry.

    These include reducing duties on equipment used in sugar cane production, eliminating duties on chemicals used in sugar production, granting a five-year tax holiday to investors in the sugar value chain, increasing import duties on raw and refined sugar and linking import licences to investments in local raw sugar production.

    In addition, GAIN noted that the government was committed to providing a range of physical infrastructure in potential sugar growing areas, establishing credit facilities for sugar cane growers and allowing 100 percent foreign ownership of sugar complexes.

    However, the organisation pointed out that while various schemes had been launched to promote domestic sugar production, including privatisation of existing estates, and while there had been some improvements in the “management and operation of the privatised sugar estates and some commensurate increases in sugarcane production,” overall, this represented little substantive progress given what was required to meet government’s objectives.

    Executive Secretary of the National Sugar Development Council, Dr. Latif Busari said the nation’s sugar production level would hit about 1.79 million tonnes by 2020, higher than the 1.5 million tonnes consumed annually.

    International Sugar Organisation currently puts Nigeria’s total sugar production at 30,000 tonnes.

    Busari said measures had been put in place to ensure that the country achieved self-sufficiency in sugar production by the year 2020.

    To achieve this, he said the Federal Government approved the Nigeria Sugar Master Plan last September to transform the nation’s promising sugar industry into a major revenue earner driven by the private sector.

    Busari said the implementation of the master plan would require massive private sector investments of more than $3.1 billion (about N496 billion) over the next 10 years, identifying a key element of the master plan as the 28 sugar projects sited across 17 states.

    He said: “If we are able to implement the master plan as projected, we should be looking at producing about 1.79 million metric tons of sugar between 2020 and 2023 which is also what is projected to be our demand about that time.

    “We should be able to produce about 161 million litres of ethanol; we should be able to also generate over 117,000 jobs for the economy.

    “And then save something in the neighbourhood of 350 million to 500 million dollars annually on foreign exchange. And then we will also generate about 411 megawatts of electricity from the various projects.”

    Busari said the government had also put in place some strategies, which included a backward integration plan to ensure successful implementation of the master plan.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Food, drink sector vital for jobs, says NCAN boss

    SOME 50,000 new jobs could be created by the food and drink industry yearly, the President, National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN), MrTola Faseru has said.

    He said the food sector reflected a strong supply chain which is far more likely to retain jobs and investment spent in the wider economy.

    The agri-food sector has a substantial GNP-generating effect, retaining profits unlike other sectors where profits are repatriated abroad.

    As the nation goes through a painful re-adjustment as a consequence of dependence on one export product, Faseru said the agri and food sector has a huge ‘trickle-down’ effect, creating and supporting local jobs and services, both directly and indirectly.

    He said the food and drink sector was deeply embedded in the economy, which means that an increased focus on food will drive growth in the wider economy as well as in the sector itself.

    Highlighting the need for public policy to be aligned with the needs of the sector, he underlined the need for a sustainable supply of cost-competitive raw materials.

    He said the economy is entering an era where food demand and supply will become much more dynamic.

    According to him, population was set to increase, adding that this will be accompanied by significant urbanisation and growth in the consuming classes.

    Food consumption, he continued, would remain a huge issue and particularly there will be a demand to agro product over time. He saidprioritising and supporting this growth potential must be a priority for government.

    He said the food sector is a multi-faceted one that should be supported from from artisan producers to commercial farmers, from a dynamic evolving restaurant sector to scale processors for export.

  • ‘FAO contributes N55.2m to boost seeds production’

    ‘FAO contributes N55.2m to boost seeds production’

    The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has contributed $345,000 (about N55.2 million) to enhance and strengthen seeds production in Nigeria.

    The FAO Country Representative, Dr Louise Setshwaelo, made this known in Abuja at the workshop on ‘Strengthening National Seed Systems in Nigeria’.The two-year project, in partnership with the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), Setshwaelo said, would increase the adoption rate of improved seeds by smallholder farmers, improve income and ensure food security in the country.“To produce food, you need seeds; you cannot produce rice, millet sorghum without using seeds; seeds are key to food production, particularly when you look at crops.“

    The main problem that we have is that farmers do not have access to high quality seeds, which increase production.“The focus of this project is to see how we can improve access of high quality seeds to farmers, especially to the smallholder farmers who are our main food producers.“Seeds production is key to food security; it is a very important component in terms of increasing agricultural production.

    She said the project would be rolled out in five pilot states: Ebonyi, Ondo, Kaduna, Sokoto and Jigawa, with four staple crops.

    She explained that the project would focus on rice in Ebonyi, maize in Kaduna and Ondo as well as sorghum and millet in Sokoto and Jigawa.

    The country representative expressed optimism that at the end of the project in 2015, the seeds law would have been updated to international standard and community seeds production would have been increased.

    “We are hoping by the end of 2015, we would have updated the seed law which will now need to go to parliament.

    “Ours is to assist government and the Ministry of Agriculture and its stakeholders to update the seed law, to harmonise it with seed laws in the ECOWAS region to make sure that it is also harmonised with international standards.

    “We will like to see improvement in community seeds production, helping the communities who are producing seeds to be able to look at the quality aspect, to be better organised, to be more efficient.

    “We are looking at developing a strategy for improving private sector participation in the seed industry.

    “Hopefully, by the end of the project, it will not just be a strategy in place; we would have started the implementation of some of the components of that strategy.

    “We are also looking at public awareness; how do we empower the farmers to know the difference between high quality certified seeds and what someone is selling in the market as grain but passing it off as seed.“They should be more empowered to make that difference and also have access to high quality seeds.’’

    She envisaged that the main limitation could be sustainability of the project’s objectives by stakeholders after 2015.

    In his remark, Mr Olusegun Olatokun, the Coordinating Director, NASC, said the collaboration would further enhance the acceptability of high quality seeds at the grassroots. He stressed that the project would improve quality control and certification of seed suppliers as well as promote private sector investment in the industry. Olatokun said that within the two years of the project, rigorous public awareness events on the benefits of improved seeds would be created.