26 - Vanguard, FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012
BUSINESS/ AGRICULTURE
--~~~~~~~~====~~=-~~~~ proper crop management practices. Besides incomes, interventions by IfIAand part. ners supported b y th e Tropical Legumes 11 project. Canadian International Development Agency, United States Agency fo r International Development, and the S udan Savanna Task Force of · t he KanoKatsina-Maradi (SS TF KlQVI) Pilot Learning Site (PLS) of the sub·Saharan Challenge Program, are helping canners with im· proved technologies to meet the increasing demand for the crop. Farmer Mohammed Mustapha says he bas been able to double cowpea yields using the same plot of land with improved varieties and agronomic practices, thanks to IITA interventions .
Do uble of the initial amount
Cowpea: Driving a silent revolution in Nigeria ,..--..oWPEA production \........and·processing is
propelling a silent revolution in Nigeria, as incomes from Ule crop are improving rural livelihoods in the country. Farmers and processors in Osu, a community in southwestern Nigeria. say p rocessing the protein'rich crop into t'akes popularly known as okaTO is akin to bitting a goldmine. "'The benefits are many," says Mrs . Olaiya Oluwakemi--a n aka.TO vendor.
Processing of cowpea grains NFrom fry;ing of okera alone, I have been able to afford sending my son to the univers;ity. built a house and now own a ~" Oluwakemi la dds.
II
OI~$aYssbehad
tried other businesses in the past but tJ:1I~ processing or cowPea grains to okaru rernainL-d the most viable optidn. The business has grown in the last seven years,and she currenUy emplor.; more than 20 people. On average, sbegetsprofib:: ofbetween N 1500 IU SS 10) and .N2000 (USSl:"I) daily. In a ~untry whereabout 50% of the population thrives on less than USS2 per day, this is a lot of cash. "I have tried other businesses but Uti i is just the
best," she reiterates. Anothercowpea proces· sor, Chief Mrs. Olorunisola, says she in· herited the business from her mother. After manag· ing the business in the last 30 years, Olorunisola now owns the famous lyadunniAkam process· ing enterprise. The business uses about 100 kg of cowpea grains as raw material daily for making a.kara ; it ba.s five branches spread across Nigeria. Incomes from the firm have helped Olorunisola to build two houses . The third, a 3storey building, is still under construction. TIuee of her children have graduated from the unit versity, thanks to income from akara. Like Oluwakemi and Olorunisola, several other processors have benefited from the p rocessing of cowpea in the community. Most of the houses built in Osu have at least the fOWldation laid with income from okara. Thousands of travelers passing through Osu town. located between lleUe and nesha, stop daily to buy the popular'okam Osu' from the vendors and eat. Consumers inlerviewed S8Y the protein· rich crop replenisbes lost energy arising from fa· tigueexperienced during
long journeys.J look forward 10 eating ahara osu whenever I am traveling on this route. ~ says pas· senger Friday Adeshina. Elsewhere in the northern part ofNigeria-home to cowpea production, this leguminous crop has proven to be a veritable source of income for farmers and processors. In Borno, Katsina, Kaduna, Kana states and as far as Niger Republic, cowpea farmers who
adopted improved cowpea varieties and man· agement practices reported an average 0[55% rise in their incomes, according to data from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (!ITA) .
Farmers who use traditional varieties earn about US$ 25/ha, while those who are growing the improved cowpea are get· ting USS39O/ha, and lIdditional U5$l39, with
MBefore, I used to get two bags of cowpea from this field but in 2009, I harvested five bags which were more than double the initial amount," says Mustapba, a farmer in Kunamawa village in Safana local Government Area of Katsina State. Cowpea ' s appeal to farmers has spiraled in recent times, making the crop a prominent 1001 in fighting bunger and poverty in Africa.
Dr C hristian Fatokun, lITACowpea Breeder and Tropica l Leg umes II Project Coordinator, says the appeal of the crop is growing not just because of incomes associated with it but also due to the lad thal it is drougbt tolerant and suitable for cui-
tivation in the arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa.
But the strides made by the crop are not without challenges . For instance, the plant still faces pests attacks during every stage of its life cycle. Aphids extract juice from cowpea leaves and stems while the crop is still a seedling and also spread the cowpea mosaic virus. R ower thrips feast on it during flowering, pod borers attackils podsduring pod growth, and bruchid weevils attack llie poslharvested seeds. The plants are also attacked bydiseases caused by fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Parasitic weedsSlrlga and Alectrachoke the plant's growth at all stages and nematodes prevent the roots from absorbing nutrients and water from the soil. Yield gap remains a hug~ challenge. Unleashing the full potential of cowpea will require greater attention to Ute crop bolli in new scientific discoveries and investments. Dr Boukar Ousmane, IITA Cowpea Breeder, notes that unfortunately, support for cowpea reo search has been rather relatively low compared with other crops such as wheat and rice. Conse· quently. this situation has constrained the cowpea crop atlaining its lull potential and is gradually putting the lives of millions of people in devel· oping countries at risk. He says that funding research activities aimed at tackling the challenges facing the crop is key to realizing the full potential 0 1 the crop.
Vietnam may replace Thailand as the biggest rice exporter in 2012 A CCORDlNG to the .t-\:rhai Rice Exporters' Association, b y early December 2011, the country had exported 10.3 million tons of rice, an increase 0[29.94 percent over the previous year. However, what worries them most is that the export has been s lowing down recently. With the overly high expo rt prices , and the recent big floods which affected 70 percent of the s to rehouses and processing workshops. Thai rice exporters are worried that the rice export volume of the country would fall by a halI in 2012 . If lhis occurs, the position
of the Number One rice exporter would be tr<!os· ferred to Vietnam . The government plans to pay its farmers more tha n double tbe market value for rice. MWe have been very concerned about t his , mostly because this is going to aflecl (African] markets definitely," said Aliou Diagne, an economist with t.he Benin-b ased Africa Rice Cen ter. USAID las t month warned that prices .w~e likely to climb 20 percent over the next three months, while others predict the greatest short-term impact has already been felt .
Rice Farm What happens next, econo mists say, d e· pends on how Thailand
imp lements
the
programme. In the long term, analysts said they
expect it to encourage other countries to step up exports and thus dampen the price of rice - consumed by three bil· lion people daily.