For its capacity to create jobs, reduce poverty and increase production in the agricultural value chain, more farmers are embracing mechanised agriculture, DANIEL ESSIET reports.
•Over 200,000 jobs waiting to be grabbed
The Federal Government has stepped up efforts to increase crop and animal production as part of its wider goal to increase exports and foreign exchange earnings. This is also intended to close the big balance of payments deficit. To achieve this, the government has put in place initiatives aimed at boosting agriculture production and agro-processing.
The Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said the government is supporting innovative ideas that have the potential to transform the number one driver of the country’s economy. He noted that the government is developing relevant policies and an enabling environment to foster investment in the agriculture sector. This will play a big role to boost productivity and performance of stakeholders, especially small-scale farmers.
Adesina said the government targets creating about 3.5 million jobs from the agricultural sector annually under the country’s development blueprint, adding that the aspiration could only be achieved through mechanised agriculture. He said the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has started to establish 1,200 Agricultural Equipment Hiring Enterprises (AEHE) centres across the country.
The scheme, which was launched on August 25 by President Goodluck Jonathan, is targeted at putting hoes and cutlasses into the museums and providing Nigerian farmers affordable mechanised services regardless of their location. To back this up, President Jonathan directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to set aside a N50 billion Agricultural Mechanisation Fund for the roll out.
Adesina, who performed the official take-off ceremony of the programme in Gusau, Zamfara State, said the AEHEs scheme, with support from the Agricultural Mechanisation Fund, would lead to the establishment of a minimum of 1,200 centres where tractors and other agricultural equipment could be accessed across the nation. This, he said, is expected to happen between now and 2016. The centres will provide 6,000 units of tractors and their implements, 15,000 power tillers and over 20,000 planting, harvest and post harvest equipments.
“This will be used to mechanise minimum of four million hectares of farm land in the country, with a projection that it will expand food production by an additional 20 million metric tons, and create over 200,000 direct and indirect jobs for youths.
“Once set up, the centres will provide farmers the opportunity to lease or hire out various types of agricultural equipment for land preparation, harvesting and in the area of post-harvest operations, repair and maintenance of such equipment. There are significant opportunities for job creation in post harvest management. An increasing amount of wild fish stocks are being depleted due to overcapacity and damaging fishing methods. These depletions are widespread.”
According to him, there is a need to rebuild fisheries where ever possible. This require initiatives that would create employment in fish stock assessment, monitoring, control and protection, as well as supporting additional research positions in relevant technologies.
With rising pressure to mitigate the impacts of climate change, experts see growing biofuel sector expanding to create thousands of jobs in related agriculture and industry processes. Already, experts are seeing job creation for agricultural workers producing biofuels at small and medium capacity scales. With mechanisation and technology, there will be jobs for professionals to help farmers align information technology (IT) and technology activities with business objectives and ambitions to enhance performance and minimise risks.
The minister was of the view that the economy will witness a growing and diversifying agricultural sector, which will create employment opportunities across the value chain. He said the government is promoting farming activities across major commodities such as cocoa, rice, cassava, sorghum and maize.
This has triggered a flurry of activities requiring skilled personnel in processing, marketing, machinery operation and repair, transport and logistics, and quality control. The cassava revolution is also helping the government to create more jobs. Speaking at the inauguration of Oamsal High Quality Cassava Flour Processing factory at Ayede –Ekiti, Ekiti State, Adesina pledged government’s resolve to turn cassava into gold in Nigeria. He stated that government’s plan is to continually make funds available to support Small and Medium Scale Entrepreneurs to upgrade their facilities.
The Minister said 35 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) would benefit one million Naira each from the Cassava Bread Fund, to enable them achieve entrepreneurial optimum performance, which is made available by the Bank of Industry (BoI). Adesina sees the sector absorbing large numbers of new job seekers and offer meaningful work with public and private benefits. For this to happen, constraints to land, capital, and skills are to be addressed, providing features to make the sector friendly to the needs of young graduates.
Major food companies that have begun innovative reformation of their supply chains with the intention to improve their operations and create new job opportunities are increasing. These include Flour Mills of Nigeria, Dangote Group and Dominion Group.
For instance, Kaboji Farms, located in Kaboji Town, in Kontagora, Niger State, has carved a niche for itself in mechanised farming. The 10,000-hectare farm, established by Flour Mills of Nigeria (FMN) to cultivate maize and other cereals, has investments worth over N1 billion.
The farm has 2,000 hectares of maize and 1,000 hectares of soya beans, and other cultivated crops such as rice and cassava. The Nation learnt that as part of its expansion programme, the management of the farm has concluded arrangements to increase the cultivated area by 2,000 hectares over the next five years, with a projected output of 7000 metric tonnes (MT).
The farm’s Manager and Agric Technical Adviser, Mr. Kobus De Jager, said Nigeria needs large commercial businesses to transform her agriculture and food-production ability. He said the key to profitable commercial farming is good yield and control of key input, hence the farm uses the latest farming techniques and highly mechanised approach, which in the last two seasons, has guaranteed increased yield of more than 50 per cent.
With this, De Jager said the management of the farms is optimistic that sustained and dynamic agricultural growth initiatives such as those it has embarked on, would contribute to food security and sufficiency and help Nigeria realise its huge potential as an economic giant in Africa and beyond.
On its part, the management regularly upgrades its farming implements and machineries by using tractors, seed planters and combined harvesters. This has created jobs for the youth of the area. Apart from farm workers and labourers, heavy tractor, trailer truck drivers are in great demand. Because of this, tractors, harvesters and seed planters are indispensable tools of daily life in major farms owned by the private sector across the country.
Besides these categories of workers, mechanised farms create jobs for office production planners; agronomists; accountants; breeders; machinery and agricultural parts coordinator; business managers; human resources managers; finance manager; agric and mechanical engineers; agric extension officers; procurement managers; transport managers and farm technicians though on very small scale. There is also the demand for reliable, responsible and motivated people, who can combine technical knowledge with practical skills in such farms.
Young people are being employed and trained to use tractors to plow and get the fields ready for planting. For school leavers, the company gives them the opportunity to learn basic tractor operation and helps complete some work. As a requirement, they need to be physically fit and have drivers’ licences. Although not essential, some of them are graduates of agricultural colleges.
As tractor drivers, they undertake a variety of different jobs including ploughing, drilling or harvesting. The role may also include maintaining and cleaning the tractor. In Kaboji town, most women are no more full time housewives, but strong contributors to family standard of living. These women, on a monthly basis, earn competitive income as their counterparts in the civil service because they work and contribute in various ways to the farms.
For instance, as early as 6am, they assemble in hundreds, clad in farm clothes, with their lunch packs and be ready for the farms. They also earn income from picking leftovers of maize and soya beans from the harvesters’ machines.
Kaboji Farm’s Crop Manager, Babatunde Hamed, said there are usually intense competitions among the women as they earn their income based on the number of bags harvested per day. Markers and clackers, at point of delivery, record harvest of each of them. At the end of the month, the women go home with between N18, 000 and N25, 000 or more.
One of the pickers on the farm, Asmau Suleiman, said she has a target of N160,000 for herself before the end of the harvesting period. “I want to replace the thatch roof of my house with corrugated sheets and buy more goats for my farm,” she said, adding: “My son can go to school now without worries.”
An aged mother of six, Halima Sani, said she was on the farm to support her weak husband, who has been suffering waist pain for years. “I’m happy I can make some money to support my family and buy books for my last child, who is still in school,” she said. Besides, Kaboji women still cultivate other lands for their families’ food needs. All of them still maintain their traditional farms in the locality.
While they work and make a living from the commercial farm, their husbands are also beneficiaries of the company’s out-growers scheme. They are supported with seeds, techniques and fertilisers to grow crops, which the company buys from them at the end of the harvest season.
Besides the pickers on the farms, there are women, who make a living by just separating the corn from the cob using the traditional methods. These women are part of the larger workforce that makes a living from Kaboji Farms. The agricultural activities in Kaboji have transformed the living conditions of the people.
According to the Director, Africa Region, Cassava Adding Value to Africa (CAVA), Dr Kola Adebayo, agriculture will likely continue to be the dominant sector of employment for most young people over the next few decades. Fortunately, the increasing high demand for agricultural products is helping to create such opportunities. He said agriculture provides the largest and most ambitious social security and public works programmes that can guarantee participating adults in rural households plenty days of paid manual labour each year.
According to him, agriculture helps the economy achieve inclusive growth by generating employment and reducing poverty in rural areas, providing livelihood security to the rural poor through guaranteed wage employment, rejuvenating the natural resource base, stimulating the local economy, and increasing women’s empowerment.
He explained that job opportunities on farms abound, but they are still unrecognised by or inaccessible to most young people. “This is because a lot of them don’t see agricultural employment as a viable career, seeing the reality of their families’ situation,” he added.
Despite this, he noted, the sector represents the most immediate opportunity to realise gains in growth and create employment for young people. A combination of pooled off-farm earnings, a shift to higher-valued and more commercial products, following the efforts of the government through the agricultural transformation agenda, he said, would allow more small farms employ more youths.
According to him, higher-valued agriculture will create employment opportunities following increasing demand for transport, plant protection, veterinary services and mechanised field operations.
