The Saturday Newspaper, May 21, 2011
THISDAY, Vol. 16, No. 5871, Page 57
tl persp~ctive
Zimbabwean Farmers and Agricultural Innovations in Nigeria ·gena has all it takes to be an agricultural powemouse. To start with, Nigen'a is blessed witll 79 million hectares 07 arable land. For the purposes of romparison, this is about a fifth of the entire Jandmass of the European Union region, the world leading exporter of food; and five times the size of CaliJomia, also one of the world's largest producers and ~rters of food. Apart from arilble land, Nigeria IS also endowed with ronducive ecological ronditions and blessed with abundant water resoun:es and adequate rainfall Nigeria is under-pertorming in agriculture because of many reasons. One major problem is under-cultivation: only about 44 Yo of the total arable land is presently under cultivation. Anotl,er is low yield: yield per hectare in Nigeria is roughly about 25% of the global average. The major dlallenge, however, is that fanning is largely practiced at subsistence level and mostly unaertaken by small-holding, Uneducated and a!l!!'g farmers. In Ni~eria tOday, agriculture is still d>aracterized by inefficient and outmoded production techniques, low quality of produce, heavy post-harvest losses, 1im.ited access to medlaruzation and quality inputs, limited valueaddition, and limitea facilities for credit, inigalion, storage, processing and extension services." . Also, agriculture, wl1im used to be the mainstay of the N igerian eronomy, has fallen out of grace in the rountry. In the sixties, a¢.cuIture rontributed mOre tIian 65% of Nigena's GOP.
N
By Bllkola Saraki
for the work or were m ore interested in helping themselves. This dispOSition towards rommerrial farming made the events unfolding in Zimbabwe in the early part of the last decade of deeR interestto us. The white rommerrial farmers, who had made timbabwe a major food basket of Africa Were being displaced in droves through a land re-aIIocation policy. Some of the white fl!nners m!&""ted to Zambia and Mozambique, and wiiliin a short while started making appreciable impact on the agricultural sectors in !liese rountries. While it was clear that in Kwara State we had the land but lacked the expertise for modem farming; it was also clear to us that the displaced Zimbabwean farmers had the expertise and the orientation for commercial agriculture but lacked the We decided to explore tl,e passibility of bnngm& the two strengths together in a win-win proPOSItiOn. The idea of a transformative partnership was bom. We reAmed out to the displaced farmers. tlut there Were many rivers to be crossed to bring tllis idea to fruition. 1he first was the legitimate skepticism of the farmers who had been displaced from their natural habitats and Were being asked to relocate to some strange land about 4lXXl kilometers away. Another was the initial hostility of the host rommunity, whim Then,ourroun~wasanetexporteroffoodand feared being displaced with little benefits and earned most of Its foreign exmange from agri- without adequate rompensation. And yet others Were the cl1aIIenges of poor infrastructure and cultural produce. Not anymore. Today, mOle tllan 80% of our foreign exc1langerome; from oil limited credit opportunities. As a fonner banker, I knew that most banks in alone. Agriculture has been relegated to the background, at great costs, and negatively Nigeria seldom provide credit to agricultural impacting our capacity to create jobs, reduce ventures because of they ronsider the scale too poverty, increase national productivity, diversify small and tlle business unviable. Incidentally, the our economy, achieve food security, and put our Shonga experiment was as mum an opportunicountry on the path of sustainable development ty as itwas a cl1aIIenge for us. However, we tried, Kwara State, tl,e site of the experiment I am with ronsiderable success, to present these new here to discuss witll you, is actually a mini pro~ 'as an opJXlrtunity for the banks to act Nigeria .ill. tenns of agricultural potentials and consiStently willl tl.eir previous positions, ch;iller~; ·T he state is located close to the mid- " becaUSe here was a project that rould be supdle'of tl,e rountry: it is 306 kilometers away from poI\ed. In the end, the fanners, backed by govLagos, 0"," rommerrial nerve<entre; and 500 ervmert gui!rantee, Were able to secure subStankilOlneters .from Abuja, our federal capil<\L tial' roinmercial loans from a consortium of Kwara State is inhabited by 25 million people; '. ·bimks. . most of whom are rural dwellers and fanners: . . We Were also able to secure the buy-in of the The state receives most of its revenues from the . host rommunity not by using the brute fome of Federation Acrount and is one of the least . state or by merely invoking the statl;'s.power of resourced in the rountry (in tenns of receipts . err.Jlnent domain, but by meaningtully taking from the Federation Acrount, it is ronl<<ed 33 out Cll!E of the mterests of the people in tenns 01 of36;states in Nigeria). 65% of its revenue goes to rewards, jobs and facilities. Apart from relocation salaries and overhead alone. and generous rompensation, we ensured that lis witli the rest of Nigeria, the story of agri- ahnost all the fann-hands are employed from the cuI~inKwaraStatewasoneofhugepotential host rommunity and that there is adequate undemiined .by.·under-cultivation, low.yield, "knowledge transfer to the host rommunity limitecl scale, and little or no value addition. As .' thwug\1 an embedded demonstration farm. In sai~ ¥ore, ! seriously believe that the agriculc. : a,~9ition, we provided roads, potable water, e1ecturaI sedor holds the most significant opp<irtu- ' triQ,ly and rommunity health msurance to memnity for us for job creation and poverty reduction. bers of the host rommunity. But, for US to reap bounti.ful harvests from agriIn the end, 13 Zimbabwean farmers (who culture in Kwara State, in Nigeria and in the rest now proudly call themselves the New Nigerian of Africa, we need to modernize and go to scale. Fanners) settled down in Shonga for fuII-ool!e In June 2003, precisely a month aIter I took rommerrial farming operations. Shonga Fauns over as tl,e governor of Kwara State, we Holding limited was mrorporated as a special laundled tl,e Back-to-Farm scl1eme. The goal of purpose vehicle to finance the operations of the this sc1,eme was to substantially expand !lie area fanns. The participating banks own 75% equity under cultivation and increase yiefd per hectare in the SPY; while the state govenlment owns through deployment of modem farining tecl1- 25%. The SPV in tum owns 60% equity ineamof nigues anrf approl'riate . incentives. Using the the 13 fanns, while the farmers own 40% eam. exISting Ministry of Agriculture, we mobilized Eam of the 13 rommerrial farmers was aIIoour farmers and provided them witll credit faci!- cated HXXl hectares of land on lease for 25 years, itie;, seedlings, dlernicals, fertilizers and exten- renewable for another 25 years. This is a total of sionservices. More thana thousand farmers par- 13, 000 hectares of land to be put to use under the ,ticipated in this programme, with an additional most modem of farming methods and tecl11600 hectares brought under cultivation across niques. Activities in the farms are built around the stale. . ti>ree clusters: Poultry Farming, Dairy Farming However, the result from the pilot scl1eme did and Mixed Farming. The farmers produce milk not justify the hope, the effort and the resoun:es and other dairY products, poultry meat, and invested in it. There were some marginal rommerrial crops sum as maize, cassava, rice, improvements, but yield per hectare was still banana, soybeans, and gin!\,,!, Operations comabysmally low, the best ranemg from 1 to 2 met- menced in 2005. ric tonnes per hectare. Why"? We later found out Among others, the Shonga Farms has the tllat most of the old and uneducated fanners capacity to p~ 12 million broiler chickens were resistant to change. They used little or no per annum, 2,500 processed chicken per day; and fertilizer, and seemed stuck to their old farming SO, 000 liters of rriilk per day. The f.inn already methods. We also discovered that most of the . supplies chid<ento the newly opened Kentucky farmers saw the credit given to them as p.,litical Fned Olicken (KFq in Lagos; banana to largesse-their own share of government Shoprite, a retail store in Lagos; and 2500 liters of money-and had no intention of repaying, and fresh milk per day to Friesland WAMCO, no rommitment to getting results. On theif part, Nigeria's leailing producer of pasteurized milk the government officialS that were asked to At harve;t season, about 5000 people are supervise the farmers either had little capacity employed on the farms at a rate far above what
!an?
- Saraki
the government pays. The Shonga project has also i"esulted in increase in food supply. skills and eronomic activitie; in the host rommunities, has provided ready market for local farmers, and has positively imeacted tl,e development of national policy on fer6lizer distribution, rommerrial agriCulture and daiIy pn>gramme. The gains of ihe Shonga Project are not localized to the farms run by the New Nigerian Farmers. As stated above, linkage is already being established with cl1ain stores/restaurants sum as KFC and Shoprite, and manufacturing rompanie; sum as WAMCO, with significant impact on industrial capacity, jobs, and balance of payments in the Nigerian eronomy. Already, there is appreciable transfer of best practices to adjoining farms and new eronomic activities are being created. For example, a local Fulani herdsman, Umoru, now has a ready market for his raw milk in one of the dairy farms. He supplies 50 liters of raw milk per day, whim fetChes him more than $30 a day in an eronomy where m ost people live below two dollars a day. Also, an appreciable increase in rommerciiU activities haS been noticed in the markets in the adjoining village; due to increase in the disposable inrome; of the farm workers. Despite these gains, it is however not lost on us that to fully maximize the gains of rommerrial agriculture, we need to take the benefits further afield. One of the initiative; we have en1harked upon to romplement the Shon&" Project is the In~ted Youth Fann Centre U1 Malele. This preVIOusly abandoned seed farm is where we are growing a new crop of modem farmers: young and educated NIgerians trained in the best practices of modem agriculture and farm management. The youth £aim was initially run by one of the Zimbabwean farmers and was ronceived to create a critical mass of successor generation of commerrial fanners. The farm has produced already graduated 200 of sum farmers who are being provided with incentive; to become rommeraal farmers. Another area we have focused on is inigation to ensure that our people can fann all-year round and can achieve dOuDle cropping, instead being exclusively dependent on rain and being idle for a substantial part of the yem: We rehabilitated and expanded the capacity of a run-down inigalion scheme in Dukti-Lade, whim is now being ~almostexdusivelyfordry-seasonricefarm
mg. TIle scheme now has the capacity to inigate 4lXXl hectares of land. We are also paying attention to processing to ensure that our funriers add value and also get better value for their lroduce. Through. ihe Cassava Resource an Technology Transfer Centre we have set up large and nucro cassava processing plants all over the state for the production of 11ig\1 quality cassava flour and diips. However, out signature effort in tenns of-pro-
cessing arose out of the decision to partner with a private rompany to set up a cashew processing pIant in the state instead of just seIling raw cashew nuts to middlemen. Today, we have tl,e OLAM Cashew Processing Factory, whim has capacity to process 13, 000 metric tonnes of cashew nuts annually and has mOre than 1500 workers in its employ. OLAM produces mainly for export While it is tempting to see our experiment with commerrial agriCulture only in tenns of farms and food (and associated benefits), I want to rugue that it is mum mOre than that At its rore, It is also a searcl1 for a sustainable model of development at the sul>-nationallevel. One model of administration at the subnational level is to dutifully wait for monthly allocations from the Federation Acrount and disburse down the line. Except the state is one of the highly resourced state; (eitller on acrount of being endowed with oil or of being an industrial centre), monthly allocations and intemally generated revenue would only be enoug\1 to pay salaries and fix a few roads, classrooms and nospitals. The other model is to see the state mOre as an active agent of development, and less as a disbursement ronduit This model favours leveraging active and donnant resoW"Cl'S to grow ttie productive base of the state eronomy and wean It of over-dependence on transfers. From experience, we know that would have been a wrong-headed approam because we do not have the resoun:es and expertise to run SUcll endoeavours and because the landscape is slill littered with the carcasses of state-owned enterprises. But while we favoured the PPP model, we Were also mindful of the fact that this approam rould only work when the state proVIdes the enabling and the regulatory environment and when afongside public value, a private value is also createrf to attract and sustain the interests of the individuals and companies involved. Let me end by saying that J believe the future of Africa lies in developing enterprises that can simultaneously create jobs and wealth. Dependence on mineral extraction will not take US up the development ladder. Also, handouts and aids will not lift Africa out of poverty. DevelopmentE'~ and the developeG world can meaningtu.!Jy partner with us in our renewed searCh for growth and development by providing long-leon, roncession~ loans and technical expertise, by making signincant investments across the value cl1ain m schemes sum as the one in Shanga, and by removing farm subsidies and other trade impediments that undermine the rompetitiveness of agricultural goods from Africa in the domestic and international markets. • Excerpts of a p"'selJtatiolJ made by Dr. HI/kola SaTakr, Gavemor of Kwara State, at O ratham House, Llmdo" Oil 9th May 2011