The Dilemma over Food

The current global food crisis removes the veil over Nigeria’s grave food situation. How prepared is the nation, even as the crisis grows into a full-blown disaster

By RAYMOND MORDI

Staple Foodstuff

Nigerians groaning under the yoke of the price they are paying for the shrinking global rice output may find themselves in a more difficult situation next year, when there may be no rice available in the international rice market. Olatunji Akande, director-general of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, NISER, Ibadan, Oyo State-based who gave this indication, said the rice crisis is a reality that requires not only an immediate solution, but a medium and a long-term measure as well. “We have had this problem since July 2007. I participated at a regional African research group conference at the Africa Rice Centre, ARC, in Cotonou, Benin Republic, last July, and based on the figures presented to us, the conclusion was that unless there was a concerted effort to address the problem in the rice sectors we were going to run into problem and that has come to pass”, he told the magazine.
A source at the ARC, who does not want to be named, confirmed the NISER director-general’s prediction, saying that hitherto 95 per cent of the global rice output is retained in producer countries, leaving only five per cent for export. He said since producer countries are now curtailing their exports in the wake of this crisis, the percentage dedicated for export is now shrinking. “With all these factors now reducing global rice output, there may be nothing left for export next year”, he told the magazine.
Besides, there are strong indications that the federal government knew about the impending crisis and did nothing to avert it. The source within the ARC, an inter-governmental body that started as the West Africa Rice Development Association, said five years ago, the centre developed a policy document, in conjunction with NISER, where it warned the government about the impending crisis in rice production if certain things were not done. Again, last September in Abuja, during a meeting of all the ministers of agriculture from member countries, Abdoulaye Seck, director-general, ARC, reminded participants that the impending crisis was a reality. He also went on to detail what needed to be done by each member country to avoid the crisis. Seck’s conclusion was that member countries should reconsider their rice import policy. “In view of this situation, African national rice economies will increasingly become exposed to unpredictable external supply and price shocks. The current rise in prices of cereals and the low-level of global reserves could unleash widespread food riots in Africa.

Tractors in Farm

The rice crisis is, therefore, not a myth, but a huge threat and sub-Saharan Africa should urgently reconsider its rice import policy to avoid the looming crisis”, Seck warned in 2007.
The case of rice typifies the tragic irony of Nigeria’s food situation. According to figures from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, Nigeria spent a total $2.9 billion or N348 billion in 2007 to import various food items. Out of the above figure, government claims that about $750 million was on the importation of about 2.2 billion kilogrammes of rice. But the findings of a research project conducted by the Dutch Agricultural Development and Trading Company put the country’s import bills on rice in 2007 at $1.3 billion. In addition, Nigeria also spends another $2 billion annually importing about six million tonnes of wheat, $700 million on sugar and $500 million on milk and other dairy products.
Folarin Balogun, general secretary, Obelawo Farmers Association, a group of farmers in Ojodu-Abiodun area of Ogun State benefiting from the World Bank’s Fadama programme, told the magazine that the declining production situation in Asia has exposed the underbelly of Nigerian government’s policy on agriculture, which does not encourage productivity. “The amount budgeted to the sector annually are not channelled to address the problems facing those actually involved in farming, but end up in the pockets of civil servants and their cronies”, he said. Going by the sheer number of policy initiatives on agriculture, successive Nigerian governments cannot be faulted for lacking the recognition of the place of agriculture in the country’s development agenda. The amount budgeted to the sector has increased progressively over the years, from N106.5 billion in 2006, N118 billion in 2007, to N134.8 billion in 2008. But to all intents and purposes, these have not made any appreciable impact on the food situation. On paper, President Umaru Yar’Adua administration’s blueprint on agriculture was conceived to revolutionise agriculture, using “a co-sourcing methodology”. Under the scheme, the federal government is expected to engage experts, the private sector and individual farmers in a partnership meant to fully develop the sector like never before. Borrowing from a system that was already in use in India and China, Sayyadi Ruma, minister of agriculture and water resources, had indicated that tractors are to be made available in large quantities, and leased out to farmers at a token fee for them to engage in different scales of farming. The farmers are also to enjoy soft loans and credit facilities, which the government intends to make available through the banking system. Under the new policy, government intends to overhaul the Land Use Decree, to make land available to farmers even as a means of collateral meant to take care of bank loans.
Agriculture was also on the front-burner under former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. It is on record that Obasanjo launched many programmes and initiated policies to reverse the situation. Some of the policy interventions and incentives that was initiated by the administration to stimulate growth through agriculture include; an outright ban on the importation of fruit juice, vegetable, poultry products and others, where Nigeria appears, to have a very high comparative advantage; increased agricultural finance, which include higher budgetary allocation and loan facilities; as well as the establishment of a National Centre for

Vegetable Farm

Agricultural Mechanisation and other research-based institutes were also to have been strengthened to provide necessary policy guidelines, enhance technology and provide prototypes of agricultural equipment. Through the Presidential Initiatives on Cassava Production, Processing and Export, the cassava industry was to have been transformed and commercialised in Nigeria. The Presidential Initiative on Rice also had a similar lofty goal. Before the present political dispensation, populist programmes like the Operation Feed the Nation, the Green Revolution and the Mass Mobilisation for Social and Economic Recovery, MAMSER, have been implemented at one point or the other.
Another initiative that has been in place to lift agriculture in Nigeria out of the doldrums is the Fadama programme, a World Bank-sponsored initiative to empower the rural farmer to be more productive. “The World Bank does this by giving out farming inputs at highly-subsidised rate to the farmer. That is, if something costs N100, the farmer pays only N30 and the Fadama project provides the remaining N70”, Balogun said. Apart from providing farm inputs to farmers at subsidised rates, he said the other component of the project entails regular trainings and capacity building, which are organised at no cost to the farmers. Besides helping the farmers directly, he said the bank also intervenes to provide some specific needs for farming communities. In fact, he is of the view that it is the best programme the World Bank has ever brought into Nigeria for a long time.
But why has all these policy initiatives not translated into adequate food for the populace? Uwem Ekpo, lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, is of the view that the principal reason why the country is yet to get its acts together as far as developing the sector is concerned is that it shifted focus from agriculture to oil exploration as a major source of revenue following the oil boom of 1970s. This, he said, explains why the sector, which offers employment to 70 per cent of the population, is neglected. “While oil wealth has financed major investments in the country’s infrastructure, Nigeria remains among the world’s poorest countries in terms of per capita income. Oil revenues led the government to ignore agriculture, and the consequence is that Nigeria must now import food to feed its teeming population”, he added.
As far as the director-general, NISER is concerned, the processes of implementing policies in Nigeria have not been good and there are some other ancillary problems inherent in the sector. “The farmers are becoming old and they are accustomed to hoe and cutlass. Modern agriculture cannot be based on the old practices. We do not have new people going into agriculture, particularly enlightened segment of the population, which are the young people leaving the university”, Akande said. The Fadama project was put in place to bridge the knowledge gap, as well as empower the smallholder to play a greater role in the system. But there is not much to show for the much-publicised project. “On paper it is so well-run that there should be no problems”, he added.
But some people believe that it is not so. It entails some paperwork, Balogun said, which tends to be slow. “It’s a wonderful idea, but it is the human element that is militating against it. Imagine the World Bank giving a livestock farmer N250,000 to build pens for pigs, and he diverted much of the money into paying his children’s school fees. The World Bank does not give cash, so what this guy did was to go to the company that was to supply the materials and convince them to hand over the cash to him. Besides, he said owing to the low level of literacy among rural dwellers, who are the beneficiaries of the project; they do not usually make full use of the opportunities extended to them through the programme. “They are trying, to be honest, but with the kind of orientation they are being made to imbibe, education does matter, knowledge does matter, because one needs to have the right mindset to be able to adhere strictly to laid down guidelines. But many of our farmers are still steeped in the old ways, and are not willing to change”, the general secretary added. He continues: “Don’t get me wrong; it is still better than these government programmes, which end up in political chicanery and where the funds budgeted for them end up in private pockets”.
Balogun said government is locked in a web of its own making, because it has gotten the whole thing wrong from the beginning. “It is sad to say, but the government has lost touch with the people. Between the government and the people, there are civil servants and my experience has been that civil servants want to become overlords. It is granted that the minister cannot come down directly to the farmer, the director in the ministry cannot come directly to the farmer; they have to send people who are closer to the farmer. But experience has shown that oftentimes the solutions proffered by these people are completely out of tune with the reality on the ground”, he told the magazine.
Taye Babaleye, a media and communications consultant and the immediate past public relations manager, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, IITA, said government is paying lip-service to the development of agriculture, because their pronouncements are not being matched by action. As a result, Nigeria, which used to have an agrarian economy, must now import food to feed its people. He blames the state of the agricultural sector on the collapse of the extension service scheme. “The impact of the scheme would be felt at the grassroots if it were still in place. The agricultural development projects, ADPs, across the nation are not adequately funded. Most of them cannot afford to buy vehicles or motorcycles, or even fuel the ones that are available, to travel to the rural areas to interact with farming groups”, he told the magazine. The implication, he said, is that the research findings of institutions like the IITA and the ARC are not being extended to the farmers in their localities.
In addition, according to the source from the ARC, Nigeria’s irrigation schemes have been abandoned over the years, thus drastically reducing the output from the rice basin in the north that requires irrigation. “Nigeria has a number of irrigation schemes, but many of them have been abandoned. It’s only now that government is talking of rehabilitating them”, the source said, adding, “if they are rehabilitated, more irrigated lands would be available, and the yield from rice and other crops that rely on them would increase. The centre has also identified policy inconsistency as a major factor responsible for the declining yield from the sector, as in other sectors, as well as reduced public investment in agricultural research, rapid population increase, increase in rice consumption rate as the society becomes more affluent.
Moreover, there is no system in place to reduce post-harvest losses. A study of the Nigeria rice sector, according to a report by the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute, IRRI, revealed that the relatively poor quality of local rice is the primary constraint to the development of the sector. “The scarcity of machinery to help grow, process and distribute the product also constrains the rice sector”, it stated. Akande, who holds a doctorate degree in Economics, said there is problem with the input sector, problem with the producer who is getting tired, problem with storage, and processing. He added: “We produce quite a significant quantity of food crops in this country, but a significant proportion, like 40 per cent is lost to processing. For fruits and vegetables, the figure is even higher. We lose almost 60 per cent of our fruits and vegetables annually to poor processing. One of the major characteristics is that the shelf life is low, so unless we have the facilities to preserve them, we will continue to lose them. The transport system is also not efficient, and this exacerbates the problem, as farm produce cannot be evacuated fast enough to market centres where there is a demand for them”.
Babaleye agrees. He said if one-tenth of the N80 billion the federal government intends to spend on rice importation is channelled towards buying processing equipment for local rice farmers to process their products, that this would revolutionalise the industry, as it would improve the quality of local rice. “Our varieties of rice are tastier and more nutritious than imported Asian rice. It is equally more resistance to diseases and pests”, he observed, adding: “How long do we need to depend on importation. We have rice farmers all over the country, including Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Ofada, Ogun State, as well as in Zamfara, Kano and Sokoto states. Why can’t we take pride in what our people can do, rather than tie ourselves to the apron strings of Asian rice farmers?”
Since Nigeria imports a good percentage of what it consumes, developments in producer countries are bound to affect it. In Asia, where all the rice imported into Nigeria comes from, there is little room for expansion; there is scarcity of land for cultivation and almost all the available lands have been cultivated, so the possibility of expanding is getting less and less. Besides, owing to the rapid industrialisation in Asia, more and more land there is being used for factories and houses. Against this background, the quantity rice being produced annually is said to be reducing. This has been attributed to a slump in the yield of the varieties being cultivated, as well as a reduction of the area cultivated or the number of farmers involved.
Besides, the efficiency of the irrigation system in Asia is said to be reducing. “The irrigation system is not as good as it was in the 1970s and 1980s, when they had a green revolution. They are saying now that the water table is receding, so there is less water available for irrigation”, the ARC source explained. Besides, other factors such as the soaring international price of crude oil, increasing incidence of extreme weather conditions arising from global warming, as well as incessant pests outbreak are equally adversely affecting the output of rice in Asia, where much of the rice Nigeria imports come from. “Asia is currently experiencing a recurring pest outbreak; pests that were controlled in the 1970s and 1980s, when they had the green revolution, are coming back, because of over-reliance on broad spectrum pesticides. These pests have now developed resistance for the pesticides, so they are coming back”, he explained further.  
There are many things Nigeria needs to do, to be self-sufficient in food production, some of them are short-term and some of them are long-term. In the near term, observers say urgent actions need to be taken on two fronts. One is to rapidly exploit existing technologies for increasing yields per hectre. Secondly, the sector is in dire need of policy reforms to improve the lot of farmers. Nigeria's agriculture points to a gross record of under-performance. A recent study by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation, FAO, shows that the average yield for maize in Nigeria is between 0.9 to one tonne per hectare. In India, the yield is 1.8 per hectare; in Zimbabwe, 3.0; Pakistan, 1.7; China, 4.7; and the United States, US, 8.5 tonnes per hectare. Whereas the average yield for rice in Nigeria is 1.2 tonnes per hectare, in India, it is 2.9; Pakistan, 3.0; China, 6.3; Egypt, 8.1; Vietnam, 4.2 and US 7.0. The yield per hectare for groundnut in Nigeria is 1.08; whereas in China, it is 3.1 and in the US 3.2 tonnes per hectare. This, observers say, is because Nigerian farmers are not using enough fertilisers. Besides, they say the quality of fertiliser in use in Nigeria is not the very best. Most times, fertilisers available to farmers in the country is said to contain 20 per cent nitrogen, instead of 40 per cent. “So, we must make sure that fertilisers coming into the country are routinely checked. Coupled with good crop management practices, this would help to close the gap between the potential yield and the actual yield”, the source at the ARC told the magazine. Respondents also hammer on the need to accelerate the delivery of new post-harvest technologies, to minimise losses. Most farmers suffer losses both in quantity and quality during post-harvest operations, because of the use of old and inefficient practices. Emmanuel Ijewere, chairman, agricultural section, Nigerian Economic Summit Group, said the country must make its

Maize

agricultural policies attractive to the private sector in order to boost cultivation of rice and other agricultural products. “Except we attract the private sector to agriculture and make farming a business, food supplies would be threatened”, he added. He blamed the food crisis in the country on the failure of past administrations to give agriculture top priority in policy formulation and implementation. “We must take agriculture seriously in order to boost the production of food, especially rice, that is a staple to us”, he added.
Ekpo wants government to facilitate access to land for intending farmers interested in going into mechanised farming. “In this institution, every year we turn out thousands of graduates in various areas of agriculture, but the incentive for these people to go into the agricultural sector of the economy is not there, particularly access to land”, he told the magazine. He added that there is need to make credit available for those going into large-scale farming, with low interest rate and repayment spread over a long period of time. The lecturer said wholesale importation of food is not the best approach to tackling the food crisis. “It is only a solution in the interim, but in the long-term, importation cannot solve the problem”, he said, adding, “the only way this can be solved is by ensuring that there is adequate support for the farmer, through access to land, credit facilities, as well as by putting in place mechanisms to check post-harvest losses”. In the same vein, Adegoke Adegbite, a lecturer at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, wants government to create a market for agricultural products, to encourage farmers to produce more. “I have seen farmers agonising over the cost of transporting perishables like tomatoes and mangoes to the market, because at the end of the day, they could not sell and were in a dilemma about what to do next”, he explained, adding that so many of them have had to pour them on the ground, rather than spending more money to transport them back home. To tackle the above problem, Balogun is calling for the establishment of a national buying agency that can assure the farmer of a good, viable income that he can live on adequately for a year.
On the whole, as the experts have said, what Nigeria has in place in the area of policy is not really the problem. The country, which is still the world’s highest producer of yam and cassava, has good number of agricultural policies, but the bane of this has been good implementation. The National Planning Commission is now selling the idea of development planning, which was abandoned in 1985, to tackle some of the myriad problems bedevilling the country’s aspiration to become one of the top 20 economies by the year 2020, including the food question. Whether the political will is there to carry this through is another matter.