Let me first congratulate the Hon. Minister of Agric Mr. Adesina on his award as the Forbes African Person of the year. I guess this came about because of the Agric transformation he has been working on since he was appointed minister. Agric transformation is one of the agendas of President Jonathan. It has to be as food is life and farming is food.
For those of us in the Agric business our bread and butter is determined by initiatives like this.
There was a discussion this morning on twitter on Tony Elumelu’s TL about farming and how we all need to be engaged. My opinion was that farming is seen as a villagers’ occupation in Nigeria. A job for the less privileged, low class and something to engage the unemployed youth. How in the world can that be cool. Its either that or you are a multi billionaire exporter like Otudeko, Dangote and others. Two ends of the spectrum.
I concluded that there is a need to change that orientation fast if we want the Agric agenda to have a visible spread. That spread can only happen if people see farming as a prestigious occupation, if farming is seen beyond hoe and cutlass or village work.
If this initiative takes off locally, it means the small scale farmers will increase. The farmers that cater to local consumption are mostly small scale farmers, these are the people that will make the agenda visible to the average Nigerian and the impact felt in every corner.
Every day I read about the Agric transformation and how it is succeeding but honestly food prices locally are still high. High not because there is no food but because the small scale farmers that cater to local consumption still have major problems. They might have fertilisers to grow better crops and loans to buy better seeds but the age old, storage, marketing and distribution problems are still there.
Dbanj is now an advocate of farming. He is an ambassador so to speak, telling youths how cool farming is and why they should go into farming. Great! Fantastic! If the youth listen, which I believe they will we will have loads of small scale farmers and loads of food crops but the age old, storage, marketing and distribution problems will still be there. Due to this, small scale farmers are often taken advantage of by exploitative middle men and market agents. Frustrating!
I was reading one report that tells of exploitation by middlemen, a case in Benue State where they fixed the price of a basket of tomatoes at ₦50 (have no idea which year this is or what size the basket is). The farmers involved rejected this outright but later agreed when they realized that the tomatoes could not be stored when they returned home. The middlemen then sold the baskets for ₦700 each. Basket of tomatoes N700 each? by it time it gets to Lagos it is N6000 or more. All the profit go to the middle men.
My bottom line is this, I like the Agric transformation, but I also want the agenda to cover a whole lot more than farming. Let’s look at storage, accessibility to the market, transportation, removing the interstate barriers, reducing the multiple taxes during transportation.
Export is good for Nigeria and so is local consumption. My own interest is local consumption. How to help our small scale farmers get their produce to the market place and get a fair price for them. There will always be middle men but when alternatives are created we reduce or eliminate the exploitation.
Storage should also be looked into, we are wasting too much food in a country filled with starving people. Fruits and vegetables that could have been distributed free of charge to our children in schools are rotting away in the farms and markets because of lack of storage and ease of distribution.
Agric Transformation is not only about farming and export. Let us address the other issues from farm to table or farm to fork otherwise if we succeed in getting restless youths into farming and not take care of the old challenges we will have frustrated farmers on our hands by harvest time.
Cheers
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