Agriculture reform plan underway

Nigerian Agriculture Minister, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina

Agriculture reform plan underway

Hauwa Noroh Ali , Abuja

The Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, says that the government's Agricultural Transformation Agenda will focus more on the value chain of prioritized commodities to provide more income to farmers.

Dr Adesina, who made this known during an interactive session at the ongoing 17th Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja, said that the initiative would help to create jobs, stimulate wealth and enhance food security in the country.

He stated that there must be a new vision for agriculture in Nigeria that must be private sector led.
He said that the vision is to grow Nigeria’s agriculture.

“We want to be hunger free; we want to drive income growth; we want to accelerate food and nutrition and employment but most importantly we want to transform Nigeria into a leading player in the food market. Nigeria with a little help will be like Brazil and there is no reason why that cannot happen. “

The Minister said that things must be done differently and for that to happen ” the era of treating agriculture as a development project must stop because agriculture is a business all parts of it from seeds , fertilizers, storage and transportation everything about it is a business.”

He said that Nigerian farmers needed market information system and value chain coordination as obtained in other countries.

According to him, Nigeria spends N1.1 trillion on rice, wheat and fish importation every year due to poor farming mechanism, adding that ‘’the days of importing cheap food were over because most Nigerians are farmers''.

``Every economy must be able to at least produce a lot of what it eats, I believe that it is time for Nigeria to wake up and to recognize that there is a direct link between national food security and national defense. ``Agriculture has huge potential, let me say that potentials is important but nobody eat it , we can’t eat potentials you have to turn potential into thing that you can touch, peoples life’s must be touched, you must be able to create jobs.’’

New plan

In order to turn the fortunes of agriculture around, the government’s new plan will among other strategies embark on ‘produce revolution’.

According to Adesina, the produce revolution will focus on rice, cassava, sorghum and palm oil. Already, a green revolution on rice has been launched to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice production in four years.

The local rice farmers will surely benefit from this initiative if government is able to encourage investors to cultivate large, medium and small holder farms as planned.

As the initiative is extended to cassava, which the country is the leading producer in the world with about 45 million tonnes annually, attention should be focused on the by-products of cassava such as ethanol, starch, flour and glucose, to boost earnings from the crop.

The other two crops missing out on the list of produce are cocoa and cotton. Despite the neglect of the sector, cocoa has maintained its relevance as a major foreign exchange earner for the country.

From available records, cocoa ranks second to oil in foreign exchange earnings to the economy. This means that with a little more attention from the government, this crop will boost the country’s foreign exchange earnings quite significantly.

Attention should also be focused on cotton because of its huge potential as raw material for the textile industry. Given the recent travails of the textile industry locally, there is no doubt that boosting cotton production domestically will help improve performance of Nigeria’s textile industry.

Farmer subsidies

In addition, government plans to embark on rapid expansion of agro-dealer networks across the country to ensure that farmers get easy access to farm inputs. According to this support scheme, retailers of inputs will be able to get needed seeds and fertilisers to farmer, which is expected to reduce the search cost for farmers looking for farm inputs.

The goal of the scheme is that no farmer will need to travel more than 3km to find farm inputs.
He stated that that government would no longer distribute fertilizers, adding that government's involvement in fertilizer distribution had breed corruption in the system.

Adesina said that only 11 per cent of farmers get subsidized fertilizers distributed by government.

''We are embarking on policy changes on fertilizer reforms, marketing institution, financing arrangement for agricultural value chains and also developing agricultural investment framework.

''Agriculture is the fastest way of creating employment for the people that matter, including that rural areas where poverty is so endemic.

Ugo