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Nigeria: Country Can Feed Her Citizens, Become World Food Exporter - Govt
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Vanguard (Lagos)
9 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
Daniel Gumm
Lagos
Nigeria can ensure food security for its citizens and become a major player in world food export markets with the organised private sector playing a huge role in this regard, says the Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Sayyadi Abba-Ruma at an emergency meeting of the NES #14 Agriculture & Food Security Policy Commission which held Tuesday, in Lagos.
The minister, who was represented by Professor Baba Yusuf Abubakar, Executive Secretary of the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) said "agriculture plays an important role in the economy because it contributes 40 per cent to the GDP against 13per cent for oil, (crop production accounts for about 85 per cent of this total, livestock for 10 per cent, with remaining 5% made up by fisheries and forestry)."
He also told the gathering that agriculture "employs about two-thirds of the total labour force of the nation and provides a livelihood for the bulk of the rural population (nearly three-quarters of the poor live in the rural areas)." According to him, however, the sector's contribution to economic growth and sustained rural development remains to be fully exploited because Nigeria remains highly vulnerable to hunger and poverty, stressing that Nigerian agriculture is mainly rain fed and has not taken full advantage of its irrigation potential estimated at between 2 and 2.5 million ha.
The area under irrigation is officially estimated at about 220,000 ha, or less than 1% of the total area under crops. "The contribution of irrigated agriculture to crop production is therefore very small, he stressed. Despite significant improvements in production in recent years, food output has not met the demand. Nigeria, for its staple food, is largely dependent on imports of rice, wheat, sugar, milk despite the substantial land, water and pasture resources available.
On challeges of food security, the professor noted that high cost, low quality and deficiencies in the supply and delivery of farm inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, crop protection chemicals, tractors, etc. have largely been responsible for poor agricultutral yields in the country, saying that, "Nigeria ranks relatively amongst the lowest consumers of fertilizer in the world both in absolute terms and on per hectare basis.
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Current fertilizer use is about 1,000,000 metric tones per annum while the projected demand estimate is 3.7 million metric tonnes. Average worldwide rates are 93 kg/ha of NPK, while the rate for Nigeria is around 13 kg/ha."
In spite of Nigeria's great potential for the production of wheat, rice and sugar the country is still heavily dependent on the importation of these staple crops. Nigerian agriculture is characterised by high manual labour and is largely subsistence with just only 30,000 tractors available in the country (3% of the national requirement),only 50% are functional.
An elated Ijewere said he was impressed with the presence of the minister's representative, saying it is a new turn in "relationshionship that the Public-Private-Partnership initiative will benefit Nigeria tremendously."
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