The Nation Newspaper

Tag: NIFOR

  • Obaseki makes case for NIFOR’s revival

    Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has made a case for the revival of the Nigerian Institute of Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) to strengthen the country’s capacity to produce quality, high-yielding seedlings and boost oil palm production.

    The governor made the case during a meeting in Abuja between Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele and governors of states in oil palm production belt of the country.

    He said the revival of NIFOR will improve investment in research and production of quality oil palm seeds.

    Noting that the state government has extended support to oil palm production companies in the state to boost production, Obaseki said Edo State was currently cultivating oil palm on about 70,000 hectares of land.

    On his part, the CBN governor said that the country intends to become the third largest producer of oil palm in the world ahead of Thailand and Columbia, and would extend support to states to realise the plan.

    READ ALSO: College of Agric Iguoriakhi: 48 students commence internship at NIFOR

    According to him, “As some of you may know, the usual life cycle for optimum palm production is 25 years. If we had kept pace with our peers in supporting improved cultivation of palm oil, at the current global market price of $600 per tonne and an assumed production level of 16 million tonnes, Nigeria could have generated close to $10 billion worth of foreign exchange from palm oil.”

    “This analysis does not take into consideration the amount of jobs that could have been created in our rural communities from large scale and small holder developments,” he explained.

    He said the CBN’s package to ensure Nigeria records accelerated jump in oil palm production include using part of the bank’s Anchor Borrower Programme (ABP), to grant loans at nine per cent interest rate and work with off-takers.

    “On our part, the ABP and our Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (the CBN will work with large corporate stakeholders and small-holder farmers to ensure availability of quality seeds for this year’s planting season and agro-chemicals in order to enable improved cultivation of oil palm,” he said.

  • NIFOR and failure of palm oil mandate

    Sir, The mandate of the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) is to conduct research into the production and products of oil palm and other palms of economic importance and transfer its research findings to farmers. Nigeria has imported palm oil worth over $3.2billion in the last 10 years. NIFOR is totally disconnected from potentially small-scale and out-grower smallholder farmers of palm oil plantation and failed in its mandate.

    Today, there is no policy statement on how Nigeria can return to its status as the largest producer of palm oil in the world and the institute is always waiting for its annual subvention from Abuja. It lacks innovation. There is need to review the operations of NIFOR and reposition it to deliver on its mandate. Today, the institute has no record on the number of private individuals and organizations that have established palm oil plantations in the last 20 years in Nigeria. NIFOR is located in Benin City and he does not even know the number of palm oil estates in Edo State. Rather there is always struggle for managerial positions in the institute. How can the institute deliver on its mandate when it has no records or database of palm oil estates in Nigeria? Federal Government should as a matter of urgency review the operations of NIFOR.

    Some newspapers reported that Nigeria imported 450,000 tons of crude palm oil valued at N116.3 billion ($323.1 million) in the first 10 months of this year. The amount imported increased by 12 percent from July because of rising demand, thus pushing up the price from $663 per metric tonnes in July to $718 per tonne as at November.

    Before NIFOR, palm oil was among the first commodities of international trade, after the slave trade, between Nigeria and Europe. The world trade in palm oil at the turn of the 20th century and up to the Second World War, was dominated by countries of British West Africa (largely Nigeria), the Belgian Congo (later Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and the Far-East Asia notably the Netherlands East Indies, (Sumatra and Java) now Indonesia.

    Palm oil, hitherto one of the nation’s major foreign exchange earners in the early 1960s is massively imported into the country from Malaysia and Indonesia. Recall that Nigeria was the largest producer of palm oil in the world with a market share of 43 per cent in the 1960s. But currently, it has a world share of 2.9 per cent, with Indonesia leading by 33 million metric tonnes, Malaysia, 19.8 million metric tonnes; Thailand, two million; Colombia, 1.108 million metric tons and Nigeria, 970,000 metric tonnes.

    The institute failed because it is presently managing only two oil palm estates namely the Federal Oil Palm Estate Obotme (525ha) and the Federal Oil Palm Project, Erei (720ha) on behalf of the federal government while many other palm oil estates have been taken over by forest. The institute also runs advisory services relating to palms management, analytical services and quality assurance and diagnostic services to the palms industry in Nigeria. In this respect most of the fertilizer recommendations and policies of some major oil palm companies in Nigeria are based on the yearly routine soil and foliar analysis carried out for them by the institute’s consultancy service.

    That Nigeria, just this year alone, has imported 450,000 tons of palm oil to the tune of N116.3billion, is as grim a reality as it is worrisome and failure of NIFOR to deliver on its mandate. With an ever increasing population, a steady decline in palm oil production, and a proliferation of the uses of various products from palm oil, it is an economic fact that there is high demand for palm oil in Nigeria. Therefore, it is a tragedy that Africa’s greatest potential is spending so much money on the importation of what it can produce.

     

    • Inwalomhe Donald,

     Benin City.

  • NIFOR, PZ Wilmar sign MoU on oil palm development

    PZ Wilmar on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nigeria Institute of Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) to help develop Nigeria’s oil palm.

    ‎The chairman, PZ Wilmar, Kola Jamodu, said the MoU would help Nigeria to regain its lost glory in palm oil production through research.

    The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeifun witnessed the signing of the agreement between the two firms.

    Jamodu, who signed on behalf of the company, said the essence of the MoU was to promote research on how Nigeria could regain its position in palm oil production.

    He said the firm has three location covering 30, 000 hectares of lands and the first set of the company’s fruits has started coming out.

    He said: “The whole essence was on research. We thought to share our knowledge with NIFOR to translate into other farmers to provide employment opportunity to youths in the country.”

    The Executive Director, NIFOR, Dr. Omorefe Asemota, said this was a milestone for Nigeria’s palm oil industry because PZ is a major stake holder in the development of the agricultural sector.

     

     

  • NIFOR warns against palm oil adulteration

    NIFOR warns against palm oil adulteration

    The Director of Research, Nigeria Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), Dr Celestine Ikuenobe, has warned against adulteration of palm oil.

    Ikuenobe, who gave the warning in Calabar, the Cross River State capital at a workshop for palm oil farmers, said adulteration is risky to consumers

    The director decried the adulteration of palm oil with chemicals used in dyeing of clothes, saying it is unsafe for human consumption.

    He said that unless such unwholesome practices were checked, a major health disaster might occur in the country.

    According to him, the adulteration is not only in palm oil, but also in palm seedlings sold to farmers.

    “The palm oil supplied to the Nigerian markets and the diaspora is often adulterated with dye chemicals, which make such oil unsafe for human consumption.

    “This act is unacceptable and unless something drastic is done, a health disaster might result in the country.

    “Because of the low palm oil production in the country, we contribute nothing to the international global palm oil supply and all these factors are responsible for the low palm oil production in the country”, he said.

    Ikuenobe called on farmers not to patronise people who offered them seedlings at a cheaper price but should instead, buy from the ministry of agriculture in the states.

    He urged cooperative societies, farmers and growers, to interface with Solidaridad and states’ ministry of agriculture , to access loan and learn best production practices to enhance their oil production.

     

  • Foundation, NIFOR introduce new palm oil technology to farmers

    The Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) has collaborated with the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) to introduce motorised oil palm harvesters to farmers in the Niger Delta region.

    Introducing the innovative harvester to farmers recently in NIFOR, Edo state, PIND’s Market Project Development Manager, Mr James Elekwachi, said the partnership was in line with the foundation’s aim of building broad stakeholder support for programs and activities that will contribute to poverty alleviation and the promotion of peace in the Niger Delta.

    He disclosed that PIND was also partnering with a German Marketing Company, STIHL, to bring the products to Nigeria.

    He said over the years, PIND had through research, discovered that there was need for market value change in the oil palm industry and that there also was the need to make the harvesting of oil palm easier for the farmers.

    Mr. Elekwachi said its partnership with NIFOR had brought about remarkable value change in oil palm industry, adding that it had come up with the motorized harvesters to make harvesting easier and also increase farmers’ production capacity.

    While remarking that the technology was relatively new in Nigeria, the PIND official urged farmers to key into it for long term benefits.

    Speaking in the same vein, the CEO, NIFOR, Dr Omarefe Asemota, who noted that climbers are fast becoming scarce in the oil palm sector, urged the farmers to take advantage of the technology.

    He said: “This partnership between NIFOR and PIND is bringing to demonstrate to stakeholders in the industry the use of the mechanical harvester. The mechanical harvester is an equipment that has been developed not to replace human beings but to make the job easier. Clearly, as has been shown today, you can see the demonstration at the background, with one worker and one machine the harvesting process is simplified. Not only is it simplified, it is also more efficient.”

    The NIFOR Executive officer added that with the motorized harvesters the issue of drudgery in harvesting will become a thing of the past, adding that farmers will have more efficient way of harvesting and more profits.

    In his presentation, the German marketer, Mr. Sebastian Lotzin, said the product had been tried and tested in Indonesia, where farmers have been benefiting from it immensely.

    He encouraged the farmers to embrace the technology, stressing that though the farmers may not be able to use the motorized harvester now, they would eventually catch up with it.

    Mr. Lotzin assured the farmers that his company would make effort to teach farmers how to use the equipment well, adding the equipment was very easy to maintain.

    Mr. Lotzin, who demonstrated how to use the motorized harvester, said once the farmers got used to it they will find it more easier to use.

    Some of the farmers said though they welcome the new idea, they had challenges on how to use it efficiently.

    One of the farmers, Mr. Andrew Esosa, said: “We like the new motorised harvester that has just been introduced to us. The only challenge for now is how to use it. You see what happened in the demonstration. Because we do not know how to handle the machine, we did not get the desired results. But I think by the time we are trained on how to use this machine we are going to benefit. You know these days it is hard to see climbers. But with this machine one man can do a lot.”

    However, some farmers at the event lamented their ‘marginalisation’ the Federal Government’s agric policy. They said farmers in the South-south do not benefit enough from programmes and activities of the Federal Government to support farmers.

    They appealed to PIND and NIFOR to help change the trend so they could grow the industry in the region.