According to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Cattle Inventory in 2018, Nigeria has the 4th largest cattle population in Africa with over 20 million cattle out of which about 12% is used for dairy production. Conversely, the Central Bank of Nigeria reported in 2020 that 1.65 million tonnes of milk are imported per annum to supplement the 526,000 litres produced locally which amount to $1.3 billion. This low productivity and high imports of dairy products are due to the critical challenges faced by the sector including the limited access to good quality animal feed and water for efficient local dairy production. This challenge has lingered for decades and would not be addressed without the intervention of the public and private sectors through capacity building, infrastructure development, inputs and production resources support for smallholder dairy farmers and advocacy for behavioural change as well as strategic and favourable policies.
Dairy animal feed is mainly categorized into feed concentrates and fodder crops. Common crops cultivated for animal feed include grasses: forage maize, Andropogon gayanus (Gamba grass), Brachriaria decumbens (Signal grass), Chloris gayana (Rhodes grass) and Pennisetum purpureum (Napier grass); and legumes: Lablab, Alfalfa, and Soybean. Both are nutritious and have a high rate of acceptability, if well produced and formulated in the right proportion. Examples of feed concentrates include soybean meal, cottonseed meal, groundnut cake, maize, wheat offal, maize offal etc. The average cost of feeding a local dairy cow per day is 450 Naira (approximately 1 USD) at the consumption rate of 3% of its body weight.
Read Also: Addressing the Nigerian Dairy Sector’s Pain-Points for Sustainable Impact
Producing and processing good quality animal feed such as hay and silage requires good agronomic knowledge, fertile land, and quality inputs including improved and viable seeds, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticide, irrigation systems and proper storage facilities to enable all-year-round cultivation and availability.
Although the Nigerian cattle production system is mainly categorised into pastoralism (extensive) and commercial (integrated) farming, 82.1% of the cattle production is managed by pastoralists as reported by FAO. These pastoralists solely rely on the free grazing system as a source of feed for their cattle. As such, cattle are expected to consume the available feed in the farmers’ grazing path, which are mostly innutritious and contributes little or nothing to milk production as the energy derived from the consumed feed is continuously used for trekking in search of feed and water for survival. This practice significantly affects productivity as the average annual production per cow is 213 litres in Nigeria, which is less than one-tenth of the global average.
The main reason for the pastoralists’ migration is the limited access to production resources including land for cultivation due to land degradation as a result of human activities and climate change, increased competition by the growing population and poor rural planning for available land, limited access to finance and quality inputs. Other factors that encourage the free grazing system include the limited access to extension services and technical knowledge on improved farming practices, low herd efficiency, reduced rainfall intensity due to climate change, and low interest among financial institutions and investors to provide funding for pasture development. Scarcity of mechanization services is also a huge gap in the animal feed subsector as Nigeria was reported by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to be at an early stage of agricultural mechanization, also on a per capita basis. The country’s tractor density was put at 0.27hp/hectare which is far below the 1.5hp/hectare recommended tractor density.
Read Also: US Mission, Ikun Dairy Farm target 10,000 litres daily milk production in Nigeria
The remaining 17.9% of the dairy producers are commercial dairy farmers who mostly practice semi-intensive or intensive farming systems and produce good quality feed through the establishment of pastureland and processing into hay and silage. In most cases, they are commercial dairy processors. Examples of producers in this category are Integrated Dairies Limited, L&Z Integrated Farms Nigeria Ltd., Saj Foods Nigeria Limited and Sebore Farms. The commercial feed and fodder production for large ruminant animals is still at its early stage in Nigeria and unlike the other livestock sub sectors such as the poultry and fish sectors, ruminant feed is mostly not easily accessible, properly packaged or branded for consumption. However, there are a few emerging producers such as NASRUN Ltd. and National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) that produce and sell feed to mostly commercial livestock farmers. There is a huge opportunity in the livestock feed market if explored by key stakeholders across the public and private sectors given the increasing demand for livestock products by the rapidly increasing population in Nigeria.
Beyond the limited activities in commercial feed and fodder production in Nigeria, there is a low demand for processed dairy cattle feed among the pastoralists given their traditional system of free grazing, limited access to finance for the purchase of feed and the limited awareness around the benefits of investing in good quality feed to increase milk production and income. This is currently being experienced by the Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria (ALDDN) program implemented by Sahel Consulting which includes the financial and technical support of commercial fodder producers to produce and sell feed to smallholder farmers. The average selling price of hay and silage is 60 naira (0.15 dollars) per kilogram (kg) but the farmers could not still purchase even when the ALDDN program dropped the price to as low as 20 Naira (0.05 dollars) per kg.
To increase the demand for commercial feed and fodder among pastoralists, the government should work with key stakeholders including technical experts, research institutes, investors, other relevant private organizations, and farmers to increase access to affordable quality feed and promote the commercialization of dairy cattle feed. Key recommendation areas to drive the growth of the animal feed sector include the following:
· Conducive Policy Development: favourable policies should be formulated to attract and encourage investors and entrepreneurs to explore commercial dairy feed production and promote backward integration in the dairy sector. In addition, the government should promote more strategic public-private partnerships towards ensuring an effective implementation and sustainability of the Nigerian Dairy Policy.
· Research and Development: research institutes such as National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Centre for Dryland Agriculture (CDA), and Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) and the Nigerian Institute of Animal Science (NIAS) should also be supported by the government and development organizations to prioritize research on improved varieties of forage crops and animal feed composition, adoption of good agronomic practices and the economics of fodder production and making available relevant information and data as well as expertise that will guide investors, consultants, entrepreneurs, farmers association and the development sector towards achieving the national mandate of promoting commercial pasture value chain, supplementary feed, and concentrates through investment in strategic animal feed reserves.
· Farmers Organization and Capacity Development: smallholder dairy farmers should be organized into structured groups and land should be earmarked in strategic locations where the farmers can be trained and incentivized with inputs, mechanization support and standard storage facilities to establish grazing reserves. Also, interested crop farmers with access to land should be identified and incentivized to become commercial fodder producers and sell to pastoralists. In addition, extension officers should also be engaged and trained to train and sensitize farmers on the benefits of quality animal feed to boost demand and create linkages between pastoralists and feed suppliers at the grass-root level.
These interventions will create an economic relationship between the key stakeholders, increase income, promote community cohesion, mitigate conflicts and reduce migration as farmers will be encouraged to settle as a result of increased access to feed and significantly improve the local dairy sector.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
