Post-harvest handling of rice in many parts of the country is still primitive. To redress the situation, scientists at the National Cereal Research Institute in Badeggi, Niger State, are working on how to increase rice production by tackling post-harvest losses. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
Rice is a staple food consumed in many homes. But since the decline in its production, the government has been trying to bridge the deficit.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina describes rice importation as a “prodigal economy,’’ saying Nigeria has no business importing the commodity when it could be grown in all parts of the country. To reverse the trend, Adesina is enjoining producers to aim at attaining self-sufficiency by adopting technologies and good practices geared towards improving productivity.
Indeed, producing enough rice to feed the ever growing population is a big task. By the end of this century, analysts say there will be four times as many people to feed in Nigeria as there are now. With this, it is clear that farmers will need to increase their food production. The speed of this population growth is visible.
But the farmers that will make this happen are facing a lot of challenges. For instance, in some areas in the North, there is growing need for rehabilitation of irrigation facilities to ensure that farming communities are served adequate water supply.
Once this is addressed, new hectares can be opened up for rice production, resulting in an increase in area to be harvested. While non availability of irrigation systems is a critical issue, post-harvest losses has been identified as one of the major hindrance to rice self-sufficiency. This takes the form of reduction in weight and quality during drying and milling and in value of paddy while harvesting.
These losses mean a reduction in farm income. Poor harvesting means not all grains or potentially useful straw is harvested. Such losses are compounded if threshing is inefficient at separating the grain or it produces damaged and split grains susceptible to storage damage and of lower marketable value.
If inefficient post-harvest handling is to be addressed, it will require providing farmers with affordable equipment and facilities.
The Executive Director, National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI), Badeggi,Niger State, Dr Mark Ukwungwu shares this opinion.
Addressing a national workshop for the Fabrication of ASI Thresher under AfricaRice Project organised by the institute in Badeggi, Niger State, Ukwungwu said manual harvesting was not helping the rice industry to achieve its goal.
Therefore, the partnership between the institute and AfricaRice, Benin Republic was aimed at reducing this burden and improving the usable yields and marketability of rice.
The partnership, he noted, has developed a technical solution that is affordable, locally-constructed and acceptable to everyone in the rice-growing community.
Where manual threshing yields one tonne of paddy per day, ASI produces six tonnes of paddy. With a grain-straw separation rate of 99 per cent, no additional labour is required for sifting and winnowing.
A high internal rate of return (IRR) and benefit cost ratio made ASI extremely attractive for use.
When ASI works for 90 days, the benefit cost ratio reaches 2.3, well above standard guidelines. The economic life of an ASI is assumed to be five years.
Overall labour demand is lower with the technology, eliminating one of the most back-breaking tasks for women and children, and freeing family labour for other activities. For the investor, the potential returns on ASI are greater than with the alternatives under similar conditions.
This is because working faster lessens post-harvest delays that can affect grain quality. In addition, higher quality grain is a prerequisite for competitiveness against imports that cost the nation huge foreign exchange.
The project, according to Ukwungwu, was conceptualised to build on and expand the successes of earlier projects such as the USAID-funded Emergency Rice Initiative, NERICA Rice Dissemination Project of Africa Development Bank and other similar projects earlier commissioned, by addressing critical rice post-harvest handling, value-added product development and marketing constraints.
In line with the Federal Government Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA), he said NCRI has strategised its research and development (R&D) activities to meet the challenges of global warming, consumer demand and social needs through result-based, multi-disciplinary approach, cost-effective and adoptable research, with the overall aim of combating hunger, improving yield of its mandate crops and general improvement of postharvest system to reduce losses.
To this end, he said NCRI-Rice processing technology is being perfected through the addition of destoner and paddy cleaner, while, high yielding, stress tolerant varieties are being developed for release to mitigate the effect of drought and iron toxicity in endemic areas.
He said the Food Technology and Value-addition Programme was created in the Research Outreach Department of the institute to lead research and development through the transformation of primary agricultural produce into value-added products required to alleviate malnutrition and hunger, raise income of rural farming families and general improvement of agro-based industries.
The training, organised by the institute, he noted would go a long way in achieving the mandate and putting smiles on the faces of small rice farmers. Ukwungwu added that it will also create jobs for young men and women benefitting from the training, who are expected to train more Nigerian to benefit from the project.
He thanked the government and people of Canada, Africa Rice Center, Desfabeng Nigeria Limited Bida, and Hanigha Engineering Limited Kaduna for their financial and technical support to the project.
He assured that NCRI will do all within the project document to achieve the expected outcomes.
Project Coordinator, Food Technology and Value addition Program, NCRI, Danbaba Nahemiah said policy interventions in the rice sector after the 2008 crisis focused mainly on increasing farm-level production, while little attention was paid to post-harvest handling, processing and rice marketing issues, which play major roles in the final retail price and in the incentives for farmers to grow rice.
He said improved handling practices and technologies can significantly increase overall rice productivity by reducing rice paddy and grain losses due to poor harvesting and rice processing technologies.
Nahemiah noted, however, that many of the good harvest and post-harvest handling and timing practices developed by agriculture research and development centers are not available to most farmers, local artisan and local agricultural machinery manufacturing companies.
To this end, he said the institute has intensified the transfer of technology to farmers to pave the way to a more empowered rice sector.
He said the institute received funding and technical support from AfricaRice and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to implement the project tagged: “Enhancing Food Security in Africa through the improvement of Rice post-harvest handling, marketing and the Development of new rice-based products.”
About 32 local artisans, he said are had trained and about 20 has earlier been trained by Africa Rice, NCRI and National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation(NCAN). “It is intended by the end of the year, the trainees will step down the training to about 100 other artisans,” he said.
In 2011, he said the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development initiated and launched the RTA aimed at transforming the rice value-chain through increased efficiency.
The thresher, he explained , would certainly improve efficiency in rice threshing and cleaning,reduce human labour, enhance the quality of the threshed paddy with minimal breakage , reduce the possibility of stones and soil contaminating the paddy. “On the overall, the introduction of the thresher/cleaner will reduce cost of rice production through the use of appropriate, simple, cost effective technologies,”he added.
He noted that government investment in the rice sector has started to yield results as available statistics indicated that last year through the Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES) of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development, about 400,000 farmers took part in the scheme with estimated paddy output of 1.6 million metric tonnes.
“Today, the estimated paddy output in Nigeria produced through rain-fed and irrigated production practices and by both GES and non GES farmers have reached about 8 million metric tons which close to the national target of 9.0 million metric tons by 2015. This growth in production must be accompanied by improved technology to handle the volume of harvest, hence the critical the critical need the training will fulfill, “ he said.
With current level of government investment and policy framework put in place, private sector investment in production and post-production will no doubt facilitate the achievements of the RTA in no distance future.
Under this project, he said significant number of researchers have received training on improved postharvest practices, rice grain quality evaluation, development of rice-based value added products and policy analysis.
Information on the level of post-harvest losses at all levels of rice post-production is also being generated to facilitate possible and appropriate interventions area.
Hessaid the initiative provided opportunities for all stakeholders in the rice sector to show what they could do to improve their harvest and reduce production cost.
He thanked the Africa Rice Centre, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the management of NCRI, the minister and private sector partners for their support.
