The Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND Foundation) creates opportunities for farmers and SMEs to earn better wages and live better lives. Southsouth Regional Editor Shola O’Neil and Osagie Otabor look at what PIND is doing with its Cassava Value Chain Project.
Mr. Hassan Yinus is a cassava farmer in Edo State, who until recently, relied on skills and methods passed down by several generations before him. But all that changed in 2016, when along with 250 members of his cluster, he was trained on best practices on how to cultivate the essential root crop in a more modern and profitable way by the PIND Foundation.
The Economic Development Programme, under which the training was conducted, is an arm of the foundation, which seeks ways boost economic activities of low income earners by identifying economic opportunities as well as their hurdles, with the aim of finding ways to address them and paving the way to the empowerment.
Cassava is arguably the most farmed crop in the southern part of Nigeria. Sadly, experts told NDR that 90percent of what is produced is either consumed by local farmers or sold at local markets, leaving the farmers without appreciable improvements in their standard of living year after year.
Furthermore, it was learnt that the uncertainty surrounding yields, prices and reliance on age-long varieties that give poor yields, instead of improved varieties, contribute to the vicious circle.
It was against this backdrop that in 2015, PIND, in partnership with the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) in Umudike, Abia State, Ubulu-Uku Farmers Collectives in Delta State, and several agro-input companies, launched a cassava demonstration pilot scheme in the Delta community.
“We found that for farmers to increase income, they have to increase yields and for their yields to increase, they have to adopt all of these practices,” an official of the foundation told Niger Delta Report
This conviction gave rise to the Cassava Value Chain Project that has helped to teach farmers, like Yinus on best practices to farm the essential crop, in a profitable and efficient way. The pilot scheme in Ubulu-Uku took off with 238 beneficiaries, who were drawn from the cassava farmers group in the Delta and nearby states.
Explaining it, Mr. Misan Edema-Sillo, PIND’s Senior Market Development Advisor (SMDA), said the foundation carried out extensive research on cassava farming in the region.
“As in most of the sectors that PIND is working in, our goal is to increase income and employment and to create jobs in those sectors. To address that we look for areas where we find opportunities, where there are lots of poor people participating and there is opportunity to intervene to create jobs and off course to raise the income of beneficiaries in the sector,” he stated.
“For cassava, we found that basically it is a major staple in Nigeria and there are a lot of people participating in the sector. But we found that productivity in the sector was very low. When we carried out our baseline assessments, farmers were only averaging about 10tons per hectare, when they could get as high as 25tons. In some countries people are getting up to 40tons per hectare.
“That provided a massive opportunity that if we intervene we could actually increase income and employment in the sector.
“We also found that beyond the fact that 90percent of what we produce in the sector is consumed; we also knew that to increase the earnings, there was need to increase the market for industrial use of cassava. Even though there were industries processing cassava, the output was also very low and we needed to address that.
“But the biggest opportunity was in increasing the productivity of the farmers. We looked at the best and most effective way to do that is by organising training and demonstration so that farmer could learn best practices that could help them in land preparation, use of agriculture input, fertilisers, improved stem varieties tractorisation, which could make them have higher yields.”
It was against this background that 238 farmers went to ‘school’ in Ubulu-uku in 2016. Interestingly, the foundation maintained the format it had deployed in its aquaculture, palm oil and other interventions. Despite being the driver of the all these processes, the foundation’s mode of operation makes it a big player that operates from outside the field.
While setting up the pilot demo farm in Ubulu-Uku, PIND engaged got the NRCRI to provide the training manual used to train farmers, and also brought in input companies such as Harvest Field and Jubaili. These partners in the progress ran demo training and practical demonstration from the point of planting up to harvest. At the end of the exercise, the over 200 farmers took stock of their yields.
For farmers like Yinus, the difference was like night and day: “The difference is unbelievable. Today we are now better farmers, thanks to PIND Foundation for the training on best practices, because what I have come to find out.
“The training was very successful. We harvested and the farmers saw the difference between what we have been used to. The knowledge and skills gained in cassava cultivation has improved,” he stated.
Speaking further Yinus explained that farmers learnt for the first time the importance of record keeping and basic metric systems. “Most of us did not know the difference between hectare and acres (laughs).
“But by far the most beneficial part of the training is practical experience gain from the demo farms used by instructors. Teaching and talking is one thing, but when you have the practice experience, it is difficult for you to forget,” he added.
Confirming the success of the demonstration, Edema-Sillo said, “I told you we took a baseline, and saw that farmers were getting between eight-10 tons per hectare, but by the time the programme ended when we carried out assessment, we found that farmers had moved from average of 10 to about 18tons per hectare.”
With that success, the programme was scaled up to several states, and at the time of this report, it had reached all the nine states included in the Niger Delta programme, with over 20,000 farmers trained so far.
But PIND and farmers faced the challenge of scaling up and spreading the operation to other part of the region. With former trainees like Mr. Solomon Iwetan of Eregwa Farms turning trainer, the programme spread like Harmattan fire.
Expectedly, Edema-Sillo is excited by the progress and successes recorded in the training. “We engaged with more input companies and identified agro dealers, who are retailers of agriculture inputs – fertilizers and other chemicals. We knew that they are the guys who would continue in a sustainable manner because they have incentives, which is quite simple: when the farmers grow, their market too expands.”
They are also preparing the farmers for industrial demand through introduction of stem varieties like TME419, which has a very high starch content what most processors demand. PIND is also promoting vitamin-A fortified cassava or yellow cassava to tackle malnutrition and vitamin deficiency.
With yields already increasing, the focus is shifted to how to ensure that there is market for more produce, because of the undulating circle of cassava supply and prices.
It was discovered that in a year where there is scarcity of cassava, the prices goes up, forcing most farmers to jump into its farming. This in turn leads to oversupply the next year, which brings a crash in price.
For instance, in 2016 into 2017 the price of cassava went as high as over N30,000 per ton, by late 2018 the price has dropped as low as N14,000.
Speaking on this, Edema-Sillo said the foundation had already started working on solutions. He said PIND already conducted a study, and also tried to build better understanding between industrial users and farmers.
”We are trying to build a link between the producers and processors who demand the cassava, because if we continue to leave all the cassava going into food, then we cannot get out of this circle of price going up and coming down.”
Similarly, the foundation is working with processors, and in Edo state, at least one company is working to set up an ethanol plant, to mop up cassava in and around the state. The company is also working to set up an out-grower scheme for farmers some communities, which would involve training of farmers.
“We have collaboration with a processor in Akwa Ibom, SEMOA, who is setting up a 20ton per day starch mill and looking to set up an out-grower scheme for farmers in the area. This addresses two things: finding market and building skills of farmers to produce more.
That is still work in progress and we are hoping that in 2019 that would be deepened. We would build a relationship to identify more processors who are demanding and link them to aggregators who have relationships with farmers in their clusters to mop up these volumes,” he added.