For Nigeria, which is projected to be home to 250 million people by 2030, farm productivity must accelerate at a faster rate to avoid mass hunger. The key to tackling hunger is enriching its soil. However, information about the state of the soil is incomplete for much of the country. There is a clamour by farmers for quality soil maps. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
Nigeria and the rest of Africa must take major, fundamental decisions to increase their food production, Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned.
The warning comes as FAO has examined the state of food and agriculture in the country.
While Nigeria is making good progress, it still has more hungry people with the country projected to be home to 250 million people by 2030.
Like other countries in Africa, Nigeria relies heavily on agriculture for economic development. One of the biggest factors contributing to its low agricultural outputs is soil nutrient depletion. Poor soil fertility costs farmers millions of naira in annual agricultural productivity.
The root of the problem lies in poor farming practices and erosion by water and wind, which have stripped many areas of essential nutrients, most notably nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Hence, farmers are urging a strategy to boost soil productivity for greater food security.
While accurate knowledge of local soil characteristics is essential for sustainable agricultural development, stakeholders said the existing body of information about the conditions and trends of Nigeria soils is outdated and imprecise. One of them is an Abuja based farmer, Mr. Innocent Mokidi.
A fifth-generation farmer, for him, efficient management is the hallmark of modern agriculture. With the challenge of the increasing population to feed looming, he said precision agriculture-the use of technology to increase the profitability, efficiency and sustainability of crop production-has become an indispensable part of farm management as growers try to maximise every acre.
The tools of precision agriculture, according to him, include an array of technologies such as soil sampling, smartphone apps and software.
He said there was an urgent need for accurate, up-to-date comprehensive soil maps, to support agriculture in Nigeria.
Armed with this, Mokidi, who is the Chief Executive, Abuja-based Brote Urban Vegetable Farm and Processing Limited, said farmers could help battle soil depletion by undertaking a soil health assessment, adopting sustainable management practices of natural resources, and identifying the right marketing opportunities.
He said good soils were vital to grow more crops. According to him, poor soil health makes it difficult for farmers to grow staple foods. For this reason, he said it was important to understand exactly when there might be a problem with the soil of a particular area and the cause.
Without a precise diagnosis, he said soil can’t be successfully treated.
To better understand what it would take to increase crop yields, he said farmers need soil maps.
The maps, according to him, shows where soil fertility issues exist and which nutrients are missing.
He noted that soil maps provide visual information about soil functionality and productivity, which could increase profitability for farmers and growers as they cultivate their crops.
The South/West Coordinator, All Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Otunba Babafemi Oke said comprehensive digital map charting soil fertility will help in tackling the country’s low farm productivity, a challenge made more acute by climate change.
He said the farming sector faced severe nutrient depletion and land degradation, adding that if there are detailed soil maps available across the country, it will help thousands of subsistence farmers to maximise production of basic food crops.
He said mapping is becoming crucial for monitoring and management of soil and irrigation of farmlands.
Soil quality maps
Soil maps show how organic matter, nutrients and acidity vary across the country.
The maps examine vegetation cover, rate of water absorption and crop suitability for different soil types.
The Chairman, Sustainable Livelihoods and Development Network for Africa (SLIDENAFRICA), a non-governmental international organisation (NGO), Prof. Kola Adebayo said maps can be used to monitor changing soil quality, threats such as low nutrient levels and what fertiliser to enrich the soil and increase crop productivity.
According to him, accurate mapping of geographic and geologic features of farmlands enables farmers to create more effective and efficient farming techniques.
Adebayo said a thorough understanding of soil is crucial for farm plans which are aimed at improving land productivity and better environmental performance.
For Nigeria’s smallholder farmers, he said low-fertility soils with poor nitrogen-supplying capacity are a limiting factor.
Consequently, farmers suffer low yields and crop failure, a situation that has crippled food security for more than half of the population who depend on small-scale farm produce.
To improve productivity, farmers apply fertiliser, which provides necessary nutrients the soil needs to feed plants.
He added that matching appropriate crop varieties to specific soil systems and ecologies depend on the quality and information provided on the soil maps.
He stressed that it was important to formulate sustainable solutions for farmers to build healthier soils and to nurture and maintain them. This, according to him, will not only arrest soil deterioration but also protect a critical livelihood for millions of Nigerians. The answer, he maintained, is on conducting a nation-wide soil survey. Adebayo said the soil maps in circulation are old and outdated.
He said a new soil survey for Nigeria is critical to determine the level of depletion of soil nutrients and minerals as a result of climate change. This will enable policymakers to design methods to improve the agriculture production system. The knowledge will also help to determine the amount of potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus and the soil PH (potential of Hydrogen). This will be useful to the local farmers to determine when and how to add fertilisers during farming.
He, therefore, said strengthening agricultural mapping and agriculture planning is seen as a priority for the government.
Mokidi said agriculture is becoming an exact science. According to him, the future growth in agriculture must come from new technologies which are not only cost-effective but also in conformity with the natural climatic regime of the country.
He said technologies will support judicious land use resource surveys, efficient management practices and sustainable use of natural resources.
A central issue in soil mapping, according to him, is to increase productivity, employment and income of poor segments of the agricultural population.
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Soil information system
For analysts, what Nigeria needs is an innovative new platform that combines artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud-based geospatial technology to deliver reliable, independent and robust farm data and analytics.
The platform will comprehensively assess and monitor rural lands anywhere in the country, drawing on information from trusted data sources on productivity, water access, yield, land use, crop type, rainfall, drought impact and more.
It will provide accurate information that can help farmers and agro-businesses to identify vulnerability or the most promising options for investment that will build resilience.
The Managing Director, Farmcrowdy said Kenneth Obiajulu said digital agriculture is far more than just on-farm technology; it’s also about improving farm decision-making, ensuring that farmers, businessmen, policymakers and anyone invested along the agricultural ecosystem has the right rural data to make more informed decisions.
Mokidi said a soil information system should be established in a central location and made widely available through a public digital platform.
Adebayo said access to up-to-date, easy-to-use soil maps and data layers is critical for land use planning and precision agriculture, as well as to support the work agri-businesses do for their clients.
Soil inventory and mapping
In the past two decades, scientists have described, sampled, classified and mapped soils across the country.
According to experts, current soil maps are outdated and may not be easily used in a digital world and may not be available at an appropriate scale for precision agriculture.
As part of a long-term goal, Adebayo said renewing soil maps should be undertaken with the aim of making Nigeria’s soil data and maps more relevant to today’s users.
He said it was essential in correlating crop yields and production techniques with land variability. This correlation, according to him, enables growers to come up with the most suitable and effective plant or soil treatment strategies, increasing farm production.
The maps generated can then be used for the precise application of water, fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides.
Challenges of mapping Nigerian soils
Although the demand for soil information is increasing, one of the challenges in Nigeria is obtaining funds for classical soil surveys.
Experts say soil surveys must keep up with the times and be able to offer up-to-date and quantitative information about soil and how soil changes in both space and time.
Soil maps boost yields in Kenya
Kenyan farmers are able to get free information on the nutritional condition of farm soils. This enabled them to decide the amount and type of fertiliser to use. This follows the inauguration of the African Soil Information Service (Aphesis).
The project, initiated by the country’s Ministry of Agriculture is being coordinated by Nairobi-based International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
The initiative involves the production of the first-ever, detailed digital soil map for all 42 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The data provided at the regional, national and local levels will help farmers and agricultural experts to identify the best ways for improving crop production through better soil management.
The information will be provided free for the farmers after the completion of digital soil mapping in the country, and in 41 other African states in the next four years.
The project combines the latest soil science and technology with remote satellite imagery and on-the-ground efforts to analyse thousands of soil samples from remote areas across the continent.
The maps are supplemented by weather maps to help agricultural extension officers to give better advice to farmers. The information will also be available to the extension officers through mobile phones, the Internet and the media, among others.
The project combines the latest soil science and technology with remote satellite imagery and on-the-ground efforts to analyse thousands of soil samples from remote areas across the continent.
Production of the map will involve the use of scanning equipment to produce wavelengths in the soil which will then be analysed for nutritional content.
It will use remote sensing technology via satellite to create detailed images of large areas indicating nutrients, moisture and organic matter in the soil.
Digital soil maps to the rescue
With the ever-growing need to better understand the world’s soil resources, the field of digital soil mapping (DSM) is rapidly growing.
According to experts, digital soil mapping was essentially a method of creating soil maps using a number of computerised methods to better understand the characteristics and variability of soils.
Experts said a combination of soil science, statistics and geographical information systems (GIS), a computer system that calculates data related to positions on the Earth’s surface, was used to create DSMs.
These precise calculations generate accurate DSM’s that can be used for land evaluation, spatial planning, agricultural extension, environmental protection and more.
Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), Morocco is partnering with OCP Group, a leading producer of phosphate and fertiliser, to building capacities on digital soil mapping in Africa.
The training teaches skills to analyse soils data and information and generate digital soils maps that will be used in development planning and policy decision making in agriculture development, sustainable land management, environment protection and the mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
The Director, Agriculture School, UM6P, Prof Aziz Yasri, said the institute was ready to support Nigeria and other African countries build capacity in digital mapping.
OCP Nigeria and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development have launched a soil fertility project to address the challenges of food security and cultivated land preservation.
OCP Africa Country Manager Caleb Usoh said the company’s focus was on providing farmers with soil analysis tools.
He said OCP Nigeria seeks to improve local crop yields and strengthen the capacities of farmers for soil sampling.
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