25 October 2005
interview
Government officials talk of food security, investment in agriculture and there are annual budgets that seem to underline commitment to these. The reality, however, is that the prices of foodstuffs have gone beyond the reach of most Nigerians. The ferocious campaign for export of cassava products has worsened the situation with the acute rise in price of garri, Nigeria's main staple. Are there solutions to the food crisis? Our panelists take a profound look at the issue ...
I would want you to make your opening remarks on the food situation in general, before we can go to the specifics.
Animasaun: Words used in the invitation letter were apt. One was affordable, two, sky-rocketing, three, crisis. Anybody will tell you that x-amount of Naira that used to buy x-volume of these food items will now barely buy a tenth of what it used to buy. As for cassava, of course, the derivations are many, at least from the angle of the Yoruba. I think it is about the same thing for the peoples of this country. You can drink garri, you can put it in your beans. For the Egba man, lafun. I know there are derivations in the East where I also had the opportunity to work and I don't know how many people can afford any of these things today. I used to eat six wraps of fufu but now the one I bought for N10 would barely go for two morsels and the trouble is that salaries and wages are not keeping pace with the prices. Any nation that cannot feed its population is definitely not a secured nation. It can be attacked not by guns. As the English will say, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
Malomo: It is quite disheartening and when one looks at the situation of food in Nigeria, the question will be, why food crisis? Nigeria has abundant land, very fertile land, she has huge population, so why should there be crisis in the food industry? There is something wrong with us. Either we are not producing enough or we are producing and we don't have money to buy, because, we are not working or the government is not spending. So, the challenge ahead is for us to now look seriously and find out what is wrong and make the necessary changes. The government may be doing something, but we are not aware of what the government is doing. We are in democracy and democracy is supposed to be participatory. Participatory in the sense that we have information and we share information, the continued dialogue between the ruled and the rulers. Our democracy should be participatory so that we can make contributions, we would learn from ourselves, and we would exchange ideas and from there, we would be able to contribute ideas to help the country.
Adeoye: There is a common knowledge that things are not as they used to be, since the basic need of every man is food, and we know that feeding is the smallest thing that you can do for anybody. Then if people came to your house you gave them food, but now, you are afraid if they come because you cannot afford it. These are basic problems, essentially, and when these problems persist, there is going to be crisis. People don't normally steal food, but people are stealing food now, which is alien to our community. I know that over 80 per cent of our food is being produced by the peasants, but the problem has not even arisen now because they are in the age bracket of 60. Most of these people are dying off. Remedies would have been for the younger people to be taking up this work, but people are not going to the farms. You can't even have labour. I come from a place where you use labour everyday and everybody wants N1,000 per day now for labour. As a result, unless we do something very quickly to replace these peasants, (who are only producing to satisfy themselves and just putting a little in the market) and get medium scale producers and large scale producers in a pragmatic way, the situation will become very terrible. Go out now, you see everybody on okada, and our students whom we are raising to go into agriculture, are afraid of going into agriculture because they now find out that agriculture does not pay. The inputs are not there. The situation is virtually precarious, and we must arrest the situation now.
Nwabua: In a country where we have all manner of problems - oil crisis, youth crisis, political crisis, economic crisis, women crisis, road crisis, I don't think it is normal for us to single out food crisis, because it is part of the crisis that is enveloping the whole country. The essential question must be asked: how did we come to this stage? Many analysts have said that when oil was discovered, that Nigerians abandoned the land. From that time, we have been going deeper into food problems, in terms of abandoning the land. I was a farmer. I will return from school, my mother would say 'young man, your food is in the farm'. I will rush to the farm to have my afternoon meal. Sometimes, I will get to the farm, my brother will say 'okay, you have come, take this home first with a bicycle before you come and take yam'. It was part of a culture. What we are seeing nowadays is that the agriculture we were proud to tell the whole world that is the mainstay of Nigeria's economy, at the same time, we have driven agriculture to the backstage. I think that instead of treating it as a crisis, we should treat it as a national shame. In India where I studied, you can't believe what is happening there. Anything that tampers on agriculture, is treated as a treasonable felony, because that is the source of survival. I would want us to take the issue very seriously. If we have survived other crises, we may not and we are not likely to survive food crisis in Nigeria.
Dr. Adeoye, talked about the human resource. There is no agriculture without the human resource, and he mentioned the fact that we have an aging farm population, you said over 60. But you forgot about the gender factor, that over 80 per cent are also women. What is your own solution for restoring some kind of balance to the situation before it becomes a bigger shame than what Dr. Nwabua said?
Adeoye: It is the peasant and the small holders who have been feeding us and that is what you see in the market. These people have been sustaining food production over the years, and we have been enjoying it. They want to carry all the food to the major markets. Lagosians are enjoying, people in Ibadan are enjoying. If you go to my village, it is more expensive to buy yam, than to go to Bodija market, because they would just think "I'll take it to a major market". But the pattern is changing now, particularly when this cassava issue came. Now, you can't get to my village, because the garri community is Oyo North. People have bought up all the cassava on the field up-front for the next three years. So, actually, there is no food there. What we are selling as commercial crops now for export is naturally what we are supposed to be eating. My suggestion is that we have to go back to the farm settlement scheme. There is no option. If all the factor inputs for agriculture are there and I bet it, government has to provide them and the farm settlement scheme. Let people come together as cooperatives, let there be fund. Don't give them money, get them the land, get them the input, let them produce. The intellectual right is what they are going to sustain, it means they have the expertise to farm. That is enough sacrifice for the nation, because if people go into the oil industry, and they go into business and they make their own money, these farmers are producing for the system. This is because, what we are doing now, we are just marketers of secondary products. People sit by a box of money and they say it is money, and they get something from somewhere and sell it.
These have to be planned from local government to the state government and then to the national level. Once you can acquire land for them, and then there are funds for it, and there are equipment and other infrastructure, people will be attracted. When these crops or the products are ready, the government should also make available, markets, then up-front deductions of the money that has been ear-marked. Once this has been put in the wheel, our agriculture students will like to go back to the farms. In the University of Ibadan, we have a practical training - four-year degree programme. We are taking them to rural communities. In Ile-Ogbo community, we have integrated them now. Only this morning, we were going to integrate Alafia and all those areas. These students are enjoying the service now, but the question they keep on asking is, after the youth service, they give us a taste of earning money and you dump us, we are looking for job for three or four years. I have a long list of agriculture graduates with B.Sc. M.Sc. and Ph.D. who are looking for jobs and I say it is a shame. You tell them to go to the farm, they don't have a land, they don't have money, they don't have inputs. This is where the nation has the responsibility. We must make agriculture attractive now, and use our oil money, to lay a good foundation. I believe we will be exporters of food. I had a dream of an agrarian nation, and I believe that dream will still come true. I have had several dreams before, they have been fulfilled. This will not be an exception. I want to beg the government to help me fulfil my dream for these youths.
Why fish farming and what more can the government do to help fish farmers?
Animasaun: First, about the gender percentage, I do not think that it will matter, whether we have more men or more women, what will matter will be the amount of production. He suggested the farm settlement scheme, I would say that would just be another production factor and those who espoused it, Chief Awolowo Farm Settlement Scheme, has not told us really that it was a fantastic contribution to agriculture, it might have contributed, maybe because we did not allow it to really work itself out logically. My own experience has been that conscious nations do not rely much on the number of people on the farm for the quality or the volume of production. I worked in Scandinavia for the government for sometime, and at that time, only 7 per cent of the population produced the agricultural output that fed the nation. What they do at the university is transferred to farmers and of course, with some subsidy from the government. If we subsidise fuel consumption, why can't we subsidise agricultural production? I don't think I am qualified really to talk about fish farming. I am new, but I have discovered that you need big money to start and to be able to pattern your production so that you can have a consistent output every month from which you can now base your income.
I would have had to run to you for funds if I didn't have a little from my work place. I didn't have to borrow, the interest could create problems. I think we need government intervention for some of us who are not knowledgeable in those things before we started, not to be left to the capitalists who say they run courses for the beginners and most of them are really charlatans who know next to nothing. By the time you know it, your fish would have died off, and you are left holding the baby. At least, I can boast of employing a few people now, but I know the headache of thinking of how the salaries would come. It is a good thing that some people are taking responsibilities. If I push a little fish into the market, then we are lessening the pressure, afterall, we are talking about protein for the population. We need government's helping hand for anybody who is to go into farming. I guess even for the fish farmer, that will be like having a kind of integrated farming. There is a lot of waste that you can feed to the fish, that is food to the fish. I guess everybody needs some kind of farming, backyard farming for vegetables. I grow okro in my little plantation. The pleasure of looking at them in the morning, the flowers especially, that by the afternoon, the flowers are up. You can see the okro bud, the next day it gets bigger, it is a therapeutic thing to the soul.
Alhaji Animasaun had touched upon mechanised farming, because when you have a small portion of the population feeding a whole population, it means mechanised farming. How practical is mechanisation in Nigeria and would our terrain support mechanised farming especially in places with a great deal of soil erosion even without mechanised farming?
Nwabua: Alhaji Animasaun talked about government coming in. There must be money, but above money, we need the necessary political will. Political will is lacking in Nigeria's developmental efforts. We come out with beautiful concepts about how Nigeria should develop, how we should move forward but when you look at the actors, they are lacking the required political will to translate those beautiful concepts into reality. This is more of the bane of the Nigerian society. These days, we talk about government disengaging from investing. They want what we call private-driven economy, or I may say private-driven agricultural development.
Here, the principal actors should be the banks, but how do you now bring in the banks? Before then, the question arises, how patriotic are the Nigerian banks? In 1985, there was the Agricultural Trading Guarantee Scheme by the Federal Government in which case you just walk into any bank, ask the bank to come and take a look at the size of your farm to enable it make necessary recommendations to the authorities about how much assistance you can get. Even then as a youth corper, I had a big farm. I planted maize, but then, we had the Grains Board in Minna. I was calculating that the moment I could farm on say five hectares of land, I should be able to supply at least three tons of maize to the Grains Board, thereby making my money and in turn employing more hands. With that in my mind, I walked into a bank in Minna, I filled the necessary forms. The bank's officials came to the site. They wanted to know how much I would give them? As a youth corper? Thank God for the on-going war against corruption. At the end of the day, they succeeded in giving me N2,500, which was not even anything for the trouble I had going to their offices. In less than two years, I was unable to continue with the project, and I backed out. I started to work at the Army Cantonment as a teacher. The problem is that in Nigeria, we have what it takes to turn this economy from an oil-propelled economy to agrarian one in a matter of three years, given the necessary incentives.
I have mentioned political will and sagacity, I just have to mention that governments, not just this government, governments, have not been sincere, rather, they now want to pay lip service to agricultural development. Our salvation does not lie in oil. Government can ask banks to fund agriculture by paying part of the annual profit into an Agricultural Fund. This fund will be available to willing farmers. They will register, field workers will go to the field and ascertain they are the owners of the particular land they want to use for agriculture, they get funds directly. Nothing stops the Central Bank from having field workers all over Nigeria for on the spot assessment of the implementation of the programme. The moment we come and we are in air-conditioned rooms, thinking these things will work, they will not work. Let me reinforce that more than anything else, the Nigerian state owes the citizenry more in terms of food. In terms of cassava, when Dr. Adeoye talked about people buying up farms, I want to tell you that even in my area, Aniocha South in Delta State, I know of a contractor who has already bought what will be produced on a farmland for five years, with the contract written and signed. What is he going to do? He is going to export the cassava, raw. And it brings us to the point that for every policy in Nigeria, there are people out there to reap billions of Naira from it. If someone has now contracted a farming group, like a cooperative society, to have their harvest for the next five years, then what do you think? That is why I maintain that we need the necessary political will. We need the media.
The media should now stop its celebrative aspect and go into real investigative journalism. All around the world, we have agricultural journalists, but it is not a popular concept around here. There should be agricultural units in the media to investigate some of these lapses in agricultural development efforts. Finally, when Alhaji Animasaun talked about seven per cent of the population farming to feed the Scandinavians, I would want to draw our attention to the fact that in the United States, only two per cent feed the population of 250 million people, and they even have surplus to feed the whole of Africa, and at the end of every year, they have close to 2,000 tonnes of fish which they drop into the ocean to feed the fishes. But in Africa, we are dying of lack of protein. Let me use this medium to tell the government that they are not doing enough, that boardroom meetings are not enough. The National Assembly's interest on the subject is not enough. How many of them at the National Assembly have any experience in farming?
We have left out one important factor, that is population. At independence, it was under 50 million, that population is now close to 130 million. And we are having approximately 250,000 new mouths to feed monthly. Given the fact that the population you want to feed is increasing, you mentioned land, the nation has abundant land, but the land you can cultivate is actually reducing because we are building roads, we are building schools, most of what is now Express Road from Ibadan to Ile Ife used to be farmland. How do we balance between increasing population and shrinking land? What role will mechanised farming play in all these?
Malomo: I mentioned participatory governance, and fortunately, we are in a democracy now. I read somewhere where a study had been done, and it has been confirmed that as a democratic society, famine does not occur. Famine occurs in a situation where people are under servitude.
Like famine occurred in India when the colonial government was there, and since the colonial government left, there has not been any famine. Famine occurred in China when there was depression, there was authoritarian rule, so there was no freedom. In essence, here, we have freedom but we are doing nothing with our freedom. We are becoming two dependent on government and others. I do not think the government should play so much role as being said here. The role that government should play is that of policy formulation and involving the people. Production should be left to the people. Government can only give incentives. Part of the incentives should not even be cash being given to farmers, but inputs, infrastructure. Even with infrastructure, people can provide some for themselves, because like they say in Yoruba, something you have not worked for, does not last long with you. If somebody gives you something, you fritter it away because you do not know the value. I want to quote something I read from a book: British Economic History, first published in 1934. It says: "In some tropical regions, indeed where food is abundant and is obtainable with little effort, and where the need for clothing and shelter is light, and is easily satisfied, men have not been forced into that measure which has taken place elsewhere. They have remained in a barbaric state and they have little or no economic history." This was written in 1934 and I think it still applies to us in tropical society.
We have mentioned here about somebody going to buy five years supply of cassava. The cassava that is being exported, what is it being exported for? China is consuming now, because China has been linked in this expansion. It has in a wholesale manner, taken the capitalist hold. But it has its own culture to determine what it is going to do. What is good in the market today, they are making use of it, in a market system that determines its supply and demand. Government, in our recent past, under the military was so profligate, although our money is still being stolen. It is unfortunate that even in a democracy where money is being stolen, people make untenable excuses. I am looking at a challenge, a challenge that will bring results. I am a dental surgeon, I am not practising. I have access to people in government. A classmate of mine is a governor, I have access to the president. If there is anything that I would want, it is some form of loan, like the Nigerian Agricultural Development Bank is there, it is supposed to finance agriculture, I can sit down and map out a project that will employ this number of people. We cultivate this number of hectares of land at a particular point, 2,000 or 3,000 or 1,200 hectares of cassava and we are going to produce so, so and so.
On our own, we have been able to raise this amount of money, may be a significant portion and say 'can we get a loan for the balance at a very good interest rate?' As regards government policy on agriculture, I do not know much about it, we do not have much information. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the internet. I thought of going to look at the government website and see if I can get any information. I travelled to Abeokuta and I got this information. Let us take cassava for instance, each time I am in Abeokuta, I always see vans with the inscription: TUKPA Expansion Programme or something like that. I don't know where they were going to. But there is somewhere in Ogun State where NALDA acquired one thousand hectares of land and they were able to open up 500 which is now having cashew nuts that have been producing cashew flesh. And I thought probably that's where they go to, and I went to that place again. The other 500 hectares have been lying waste. The farmers are having problems with the 500 hectares that have been cultivated. They only use the nuts, the cashew flesh is left to rot, and they keep the nuts at home, until people come from France, and they sell it to them. And I said, no, you are going to stop that. I asked someone with 10 acres, what his yield was? He said three tonnes per acre. He sells a tonne for N50,000. We are thinking of giving them some money for the flesh. In the farmers' institute, NEPAP taught them to process the flesh into marmalade, jam and mixed fruit juice but they do not have the money. About three years ago, NEPAP said the machine would cost between N500,000 and a million. I do not have N1 million. One is thinking about writing progress reports to the government to seek its contribution.
I call it a challenge. Oil was never there in 1960 -1970, it was managed by private industries. Even when you have multi-nationals in food industry, government is never involved. Where government is involved, there is corruption, inefficiency, and the programme fails at the end of the day. On cassava, the professor said there was no problem about cassava export affecting cassava producers. Thailand is the sixth largest producer of cassava. A year ago, we were having this discussion about this group we are trying to form, and the fellow now brought an e-mail from China. He wanted to export cassava to China. He offered a price, and the man at the other end, said: 'I can get it for one third the price in China. He said this Obasanjo cassava export programme will fail. Why do you have to export cassava? Why not use the cassava locally and when you have surplus, you can export? At the same time, we should be careful. Government should not control people in a market economy. Once there are controls here and there, the whole situation fails. When there are incentives, the people would be able to meet the challenge of producing more. I was reliably informed that the yield for the past 10 years in Nigeria is about 10 metric tonnes per hectare. What are the constraints in increasing yield? They include inputs, the cost of labour, farm land, and transportation. Those are the challenges that we have to tackle and we could tackle them in conjunction with government. We still import starch and other products. Talking about oil, crude oil prices are rising and the government has started a policy of ethanol production. The challenge for us is to meet the level of production that can sustain export and the food industry.
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