Rice production has dominated discourse in Nigeria’s agricultural sector, particularly in the last four years, raising concerns that other crops may be suffering as a result.
Dubbed Nigeria’s political crop, rice has benefited the most from the Central Bank’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP), which is intended to create a linkage between anchor companies involved in the processing and small holder farmers of the required key agricultural commodities, according to heads of farmers’ associations who spoke with BusinessDay. This is despite that the programme was at inception meant to serve rice and six other crops, including wheat and maize.
While there is dearth of reliable, untainted data on just how much progress Nigeria has made in its ‘rice revolution’, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says the country’s rice production reached 7 million tonnes (4.2 million tonnes, milled basis) in 2017, up 12 percent from 6.3 million tonnes (3.8 million tonnes, milled basis) in 2015. The number of rice mills that have sprung up across the country and local rice brands that have become more visible may be evidence of improvement, though sceptics think it has been more rhetoric than reality, particularly considering the volume of ‘foreign rice’ that can be found in Nigerian markets.
But the emphasis on rice has left other crops and sectors in agriculture struggling. Industry experts say the same attention given to rice has not been extended to other crops.
“Wheat has not got a lot of attention in recent years,” Salim Muhammad, president, Wheat Farmers Association of Nigeria, told BusinessDay by phone.
Nigeria’s wheat import hovered around N362 billion in 2017 and 2018, according to BusinessDay analysis of data from the National Bureau of Statistics. This implies that wheat production has not improved in the last two years.
The Anchor Borrowers’ Programme is meant to cover cereals (rice, maize, wheat etc.); cotton; roots and tubers (cassava, potatoes, yam, ginger, etc.); sugarcane; tree crops (oil palm, cocoa, rubber etc.); legumes (soybean, sesame seed, cowpea etc.); tomato; and livestock (fish, poultry, ruminants, etc.), according to guidelines published by the CBN’s Development Finance Department in December 2016.
But the programme has so far covered only a few of these, with rice production taking the lion’s share.
The process has been politicised, Muhammad said, creating preference for supporting rice, while certain interests have also continued to favour massive wheat importation.
However, Kabiru Ibrahim, president, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), told BusinessDay in a phone interview that the high foreign exchange implications rice had for Nigeria in the past necessitated the focus on it.
The ABP, Ibrahim said, was at inception meant to serve rice and wheat production, but wheat millers and others who used it for production held the notion that the Nigerian wheat “does not rise”, hence the preference for imported one. This, he said, was why wheat failed to take off at the same time rice did.
Ibrahim also explained that other sectors such as poultry and maize have also been gradually taking off under the programme, and are expected to grow rapidly in the next four years.
“A lot of effort has been put into rice, which is commendable, but even that is insufficient to get best results,” said Emmanuel Ijewere, vice president, Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG).
Regardless of the objectives in increasing rice production, Ijewere noted there are other crops that equally require concerted efforts to improve productivity across their value chains. In comparison, a hectare of tomato farm will create many times the job provided by a rice farm of similar size, he said.
“There are three tomato factories in the country unable to operate optimally due to lack of raw materials,” said Ijewere, stressing it is yet another value chain that could do with government’s commitment and interventions.
Annually, the tomato crop suffers a 40 percent loss, valued at N72 billion, between farm and market. Yet, an estimated $170 million is spent importing tomato paste annually.
According to Ijewere, if a fraction of what has been spent on rice is committed into tomato, more jobs will be created, and there will be more distribution of wealth across the value chain.
Bello Abubakar, president, Maize Association of Nigeria, told BusinessDay that his members have begun to benefit from the ABP. In 2017 when maize farmers first benefitted from the scheme, 12,000 farmers in Katsina were supported in what he described as a pilot programme. This was expanded to 19 states in 2018, covering 38,000 farmers who cultivated 55 hectares, and produced 150,000 metric tonnes of maize. The funding provided for this by CBN was N9.2 billion at a 9-percent interest rate, according to Abubakar.
Only about 40 percent of Nigeria’s estimated 82 million hectares of arable land is reported to be under cultivation, implying that about 50 million hectares of land are still available for cultivation. Again, high-yielding varieties of crops are required to deliver optimal yields.
The Maize Association of Nigeria is already looking in this direction. For the 2019/2010 season, the maize body is planning to double its coverage in number of farmers and land cultivated, which will translate to 110,000 hectares. If the plan is achieved, it is expected to have a spiral effect on the struggling poultry sector, where availability of maize and soybean will improve the costs of farmers in getting feed for their birds.
The wheat farmers have similar expansion plans, Muhammad of Wheat Farmers Association of Nigeria said. He disclosed an ambitious plan to increase coverage of land cultivated under the Anchor Borrowers Programme, from 9,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares during the 2019/2020 wheat production season. If achieved, particularly with better-yielding varieties, the country may be able to significantly lower wheat imports.
CALEB OJEWALE
