Nigerian Tribune
15 Tuesday, 25 January, 2011
'We've agric-friendly we at er, but many Nigerians are ....
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PART from coruption, one thing I observed that is wrong with the country today is that many people are too lazy. Many people want to engage in businesses that would fetch them quick fortune within the shortest period of time. Although there is nothing wrong with this, we should also realise that if you have money and there is no food to buy, then there may be hunger. In fact, we are presently experiencing food scarcity and insufficiency, you can imagine the price of some food stuffs, especially vegetables like onion. But the truth is that many of us don't want to go back to the land, yet, we want to eat and be satisfied, is it possible?" An agriculture expert, Engineer Anthony Egba, made this remark during an inteview with Tribune Agriculture. Egba, who is one of the leading crusaders for the adoption of appropriate technologies to achieve food security in the country said prices of food commodities would continue to escalate as long as we continue to pay lip service to agricultural development in the country. According to him, there is no time of the season Nigerians don't complain about arbitrary increase in the prices of food commodities. "Sometimes ago, it was a noise about high price of cassava by-products, especially starch and garri. Recently the noise was on unaffordable price of pepper and tomatoes. Now the complaint is about roof-top price of onion. What is actually wrong with us in this country? "We have been telling our people to take agriculture serious, yet, they still pay lip service to the profession. But they failed to realised that practising farmers in the country, majority of whom are living in rural areas, are becoming old. Yet, the youths are not going into the age-long profession as expected despite the effort, and encouragement from the government. Rather, they are dissipating their energy on okada riding and (pool business), so tell me the way out of incessant high food prices?", he asked. Speaking further, Engineer Egba who is the Executive Director, Tropical Engineering Services, Ibadan, Oyo State, stated that God has given us good weather that is agriculture-friendly, but we are not making good use of the weather. He posited that many Nigerians want white-collar jobs that would not secure their future at the detriment of agriculture, which is a future secured-profession. Said he, "we're too comfortable and lazy with our weather. Nigerians have no cause to be I
.Engineer Anthony Egba disturbing God with our prayers. The weather is friendly to support the growth of many crops, especially food crops. The land is extremely fertile, we don't experience natural disasters like some countries of the world, yet, we can't make good use of the natural endowment, including the agriculture-friendly weather given to us by God. So,
Disease-resistant cowpea seed available XECUTIVE Direc tor, Institute of Ag ricultural Reseach and Training (IAR & T), Moor-plantation, Apata, Ibadan, Professor Benjamin Ogunbodede, has disclosed that the institute have high quality, disease resistant cowpea seed that is also stemborer resistant. He has therefore ad vised farmers in the country, to
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Farmer, blames colleagues, middlemen, ifarmer and memfor low productivity ber of the Cassava
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. Growers Association of Nigeria, Mr Bayo Ajayi, has accused middlemen of robbing Nigerian farmers of the gains from agriculture. Ajayi told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in lbadan, that middlemen amstiiuted one of the greatest enemies of farmers. "When farmers harvest their crops, middlemen would go and borrow money from banks and mop up.the crops cheaply. "They buy the produce cheaply from the farmers and sell at higher prices in the market "TIle are cheating the
farmers and cheating the nation," Ajayi said. He also alleged that corrupt government officials often divert grants and loans meant for farmers to personal use or their friends and that is why agricultural productivity is still low in this country. ''Farmers cannot get assistance, but politicians and friends of government officials receive assistance. Yet they are not farmers and cannot produce a single crop," Ajayi noted. He also descnbed farmers as enemies to themselves. Ajayi, who is also a popular jatropha farmer,
what actually is our problem?" he asked. The expert further revealed that many people are too comfortable doing nothing and expected food to be surplus and cheap. Comparing Nigeria to other countries of the world in terms of agricultural practices and food production, he said "look at Libya, Israel, Lebanon and even USA, these countries converted their harsh weather, hot climate, not too good soil to agricultural advantage. For instance, Libya produces abundant foods year in, year out. Likewise Israel and Lebanon, but the reverse is the case in a country regarded as the giant of Africa. Therefore, we must be serious with agriculture, otherwise, we have not seen anything yet in terms of high food prices," he affirmed. He, however, appealed to government to look inward and make good use of our indigeneous agriculture engineers to make appropriate technologies available for the use of farmers. "We should not be spending billions of naira to bring foreign technologies into the country. If we could invest this huge resources on the development of our own indigenous technologies, we can produce appropriate technology that would take care of our agricultural problems, make mechanisation easy and acceptable, as well as make the practice of farming less cumbersome right from the stage of land clearing, land prepara lion, planting of crops, weeding, harvesting, threshing, drying of harvested produce and even per-boiling, milling and removal of stones from harvested rice, it would also make harvesting and storage of other food and cash crops easy.
Observed that many farmers were at loggerheads over position in various commodity associations instead of uniting to develop the agricultural sector and present a common front According to him, any serious farmer who has his own fann, would not be en'tangled in jostling for positions and other insignificant matters. He, therefure, appealed to farmers to be dedicated to their profession. "It is only when they are united that they would be able to confront and solve the problems of middlemen and corrupt government officials he concluded.
always go for quality seeds as doing this would guarantee food sufficiency. He stated this in Ibadan, during his discussion with the board members of the National Agricultural Seed Councils (NASC), during a visit to the institute. The don explained that as part of efforts by the research institute to make quality seeds available for the use of farmers in the country, the institute now has quality, foundation seeds to boost food production programme of the Federal Government. According to him, "we have been doing our best to contribute to the development of the nation's agricultural sector. Part of what we are doing apart from intensive and comprehensive research is the release of foundation seeds that would make farming stress-free for farmers. We know that seed is an important thing in farming, because if you don't have good seed, then good harvest cannotbe guaranteed, he stated". Good, quality seeds, he further posited, would also minimise the amount of
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IAR&T boss
Benjamin
money that would be spent by farmers on charnicals and other inputs. "It would also minimise the amount of money that would go to labour and that is why we are trying our best to give our farmers disease-resistant seeds that would guarantee bumper harvest", he said. Professor Ogunbodede, however, announced to the
Ogunbodede members of the public, especially farmers, that they have a reason to be joyful as the institute has some good, quality seeds, example of which is the cowpea seed that not only guanrantee a bountiful harvest, but also solve the problem of stemborder tha t has become a serious headache to many cowpea farmers.