Investors demand inclusive policy, data, improved yields from agric minister

As Nigeria plans to bring back the good old days when food production was the mainstay of the economy, investors say Audu Ogbeh, the new agric minister, must facilitate an inclusive policy, procure data that will provide adequate market information to and from farmers, and mobilise infrastructure that will improve yields.

The stakeholders insist that the minister in the new dispensation should address the slow pace of acquiring land for farming, instigate agriculture mechanisation and improve  extension services, with a view to  reducing annual food import bills estimated at N630 billion.

“There is the need for us to have an inclusive and sustainable policy, a policy that will involve all the stakeholders. The success of the cement and sugar policies of the last administration could be traced to this,” said Paul Gbededo, chief executive officer/ group MD, Flour Mills of Nigeria plc, at the international investment forum held in Lagos.

“There is also the need to address low yields. Nigeria has  very low yields when compared with other countries,” Gbededo added.

According to him, there must be the necessary infrastructure to steer agro policies. He further said  that the challenge with the immediate past administration was that there was no policy coordination among the ministries of agriculture, industry and finance, an issue the new minister government must address.

Apart from the huge import bill, on a per capita basis, Nigeria ranks 132 out of the 188 countries worldwide, measured by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO / United Nations, in terms of the number of tractors in the country. The country has fewer tractors than Serbia & Montenegro, (with 400,000), Pakistan (320,000) and Uzbekistan with (170,000).

According to Richard Hargrave, managing director, Dizengoff West Africa Nigeria Limited,  the country has only one tractor for every 4,100 farmers, an issue that makes agric mechanisation a wild goose chase.

“It is about time we face up to the facts, if we as a nation are serious about producing the food we eat ourselves,” Hargrave  said.

“The fact that Nigeria has only one tractor for every 4,100 farmers is ridiculous. Each tractor is farming 1,013 hectares of arable land. We simply are yet to have anything like enough tractors necessary to work our arable lands, and so truly produce enough food we need to survive,” Hargrave said.

“We have all the farmers we need as well, at around 12.3 million, making Nigeria 14th in the world, but we simply will not equip them,” he added.

Nigeria’s population of 170 million and the possibility of this number rising to 240 million by 2040 mean an opportunity for farmers, as the people must feed.

Andrew Thorburn of GEM 3 Nigeria, stressed that the problems in the agric sector which must be addressed in the new dispensation include lack of policy coordination, uncertainty and making unrealistic projections or political proclamations.

James Lykos, deputy director, Office of the Economic Growth and Development, USAID/Nigeria, pointed out that agriculture cannot thrive in an atmosphere where policies swing.

Edobong Akpabio, a crop farmer and publicity secretary,NECA Network of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW), said  the new minister must work at making access to land for agricultural purposes easier by getting the state governors to commit to it during their council of state meeting.

“I believe the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) should be retained. It has developed a life of its own. It needs to be maintained and improved upon. Nobody must allow reintroduction of fraud into the fertilizer subsidy allocation to farmers,” Akpabio said.

Other key challenges militating against the sector include poor road networks, high input cost, poor storage facilities, access to finance and market access. Analysts advise that the new minister must be a 21st Century farmer who understands the role of technology in food production.

Farmers who spoke to BusinessDay also stressed the need to improve extension services to farmers, especially rural dwellers. Sule Abdul, a tomato farmer in Alabata, Odeda, Ogun State, said, “Any time the extension agents come, they pick selected farmers for training so that those farmers can come back and teach us what they have learnt, but most of the farmers when they come back cannot explain anything to us.

“Most of the extension agents cannot come to us because of bad roads to our communities. The extension agents are also very few, compared to the number of farmers they have to train in the community.”

ODINAKA ANUDU &  JOSEPHINE OKOJIE