International Women Day: Tackling weeds and making a difference in the lives of women in cassava farming By Godwin Atser

More action against sexual violence, workplace discrimination, and demands for a higher quota for women in key positions in the corporate and political landscape were perhaps the most discussed issues for this year’s International Women Day (IWD) celebration.

Though all of these are important, one must not forget the agony, pains and trauma the cassava woman farmer is facing in Africa trying to control weeds with some of them breaking their backs.

In context, cassava has grown in importance transiting from a subsistence/food crop to an industrial/cash crop. This transition has opened up vast lands for cassava cultivation. However, the expansion in cultivation of cassava has not fully embraced mechanization and therefore manual labor still dominates the cassava farming landscape.

Women being major stakeholders in rural communities play a significant role in cassava  production and processing. To control weeds, for instance, women contribute about 90% of the hand-weeding, and in some cases where the burden is huge and unbearable, children are withdrawn from school to assist in weeding, an action that compromises the future of the home.

Besides, hoes and cutlasses are the major tools that women use in controlling weeds. These implements demand that women must bend their backs for between 200-500 hours annually to clear the weeds on the field and prevent economic losses in cassava fields especially in fields infested with difficult weeds. In instances where the woman is nursing a baby and has to back the child, the negative health impact of weeding on the waist and chest of the woman farmer can be better imagined.

This sad reality which the African woman farmer faces on a yearly basis has never gained sympathy nor desired attention from policymakers or donors, rather weeding is a ‘new normal,’ and even the farmers who face this uphill task hardly recognize it as a challenge. Several policies or programs initiated by governments in Africa either downplay or have never given enough attention to weed control. On the contrary, more attention is paid to issues such as the development of improved varieties, procurement of fertilizers, and value addition or processing. But without effective weed control, the gains of genetic improvement can hardly be realized. In cassava for instance, if a farmer fails to control weeds during the first 16 weeks of the crop, they can hardly harvest cassava roots from the field. Research evidence attributes Africa’s low productivity in cassava fields partly to poor weed management. While Asia records cassava yield of 30-40 tons per hectare, Africa and Nigeria in particular is still grappling with an average yield 12-13 tons per ha.

The greater implication of this scenario is that Africa’s dream for a Green Revolution lies ahead in a distant future and emancipating the continent from the grip of hunger and poverty needs more efforts and collaboration.

In spite of this gloomy picture, the IWD offers us the opportunity to reflect and examine what options can bring about change and make a difference in the lives of women in agriculture.

In this reflection, the Cassava Weed Management Project holds promise in bringing about change and transformation in the lives of women farmers and children. The project which involves researchers from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) with partners from National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, Abia State; Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Ogun State; and the University of Agriculture Makurdi, Benue State is for the first time assessing sustainable weed management technologies in cassava systems in Nigeria.

The five-year project aims to develop integrated weed control measures that would alleviate the burden of weeding and put more money in the pockets of farmers especially women who are in the majority of 70 percent of rural dwellers in Africa.

The attainment of the goals of this project will certainly bring about change in the livelihood of the African woman farmer who lives on less than $2 dollars a day, and produces about 50 percent of food needs in the developing countries.

Plant scientists advocate bio techniques for pest, diseases control

 

The 40^th Annual Conference of the Nigerian Society for plant protection recently held in Abuja with the “theme sustainable plant protection for National Development, Prospect and Challenges” has emphasized on the use of bio friendly measures to control pest and diseases in plants saying this will enhance healthy intakes of foods free of toxic residues.    

    

It was posited that plants give some nasty and unbearable reaction in our body system as a result of chemical reaction, which has made the Nigerian Society for plant protection to look forward to the use of biology control, which are “using botanicals, in controlling pest and diseases, which are environment friendly, they are non-pathogenic, they are no path toxic, and they are not pollutant.

Speaking at the Conference, the National President of the Nigerian Society for Plant Protection, Professor David Babatunde Olufolaji from the Federal University of Akure, a plant Pathologist said scientists should encourage the use of bio methods by farmers in the controlling of pest and diseases for the purpose food safety and food security adding that “, the customary things has been the use of  chemical to control pest and diseases, but it was discovered that, some chemicals may proffer pathogenic ability, as they might pollute the environment as they are not environment friendly and are also path toxic, as they have residues on plants”

The soil pathologist said individual research needs to be coordinated towards helping the society to come together to showcase their researches just as he  clamored for farmers driven research which is looking into farmers who have problems with diseases on a particular crop pointing that members of the society  should be tailored towards such a problem.

Prof. Babatunde said, the Nigerian Society for plant protection has been able to control pest and disease through many researchers that are scattered across the country in all universities of  agriculture stressed that “Nigerian Society for plant protection have been able to  access the pathogencity level of diseases, its severity and the model used in accessing if the pest is able to be controlled  or not, after which it is taken into the laboratory, to check it capacity, then preferring solution  by looking forward, experimenting, the use of botanicals, chemicals to know which is anti-fungi to the particular fungi that causes the disease, if it’s a bacterial, anti-bacterial will be used and  if its anti-nematodes, anti-nematodes will be used to checkmate the biological control”

Group promises ten thousand youth leaders in agriculture by 2020

 As the youths in partnership with major stakeholders in both private and public sectors of Nigeria recently held the first National Youth Agric Festival, the President and Founder, Fresh Brain Development Initiative, Barrister Nkiruka Nnaemego has said that the event was intended to ensure the establishment of 10,000 youth leaders in agribusiness by 2020.

Barister Nnaemego pointed that Youth Farm project was launched with the aim of promoting a youth led agriculture society with expectancy to meet Africa’s goals of reducing unemployment and poverty, while increasing active youth participation in attainment of sustainable agriculture across the continent by 2020. 

 In his summation at the occasion, the Executive Director, Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) Prof. Abubakar expressed concern over low appearance of youths at both farming and agricultural research saying that “farming has been left in the hands of the aged people and likewise agricultural research. With the role agriculture can play in development of an economy, there is a need for more sensitization, awareness and emphasis on the role of the youths in agricultural development”

Dwindling oil price: AFAN President says a blessing to agriculture

As crude oil price continues to dwindle in the international market, analysts have been x-raying the options available for Nigeria to ensure that the economy does not collapse as the clock ticks. The alternative to crude oil which all stakeholders in the Nigerian economy kept hammering on is embedded in the non-oil sector, which is laden with a lot of potentials and opportunities capable of turning around the fortunes of our economy.

The non-oil sector encompasses an array of sectors including agriculture, which experts have since identified as the most viable option for diversifying Nigeria’s economy and pulling the country out of the current economic quagmire caused by the falling oil price.

Many international and local bodies and prominent individuals have been calling for the use of agriculture to free Africans including Nigerians from the clutches of poverty and unemployment among others as many of the continent’s governments have continued to pay deaf ear.  

Nigeria endowed with vast farm land, other agricultural resources and large population neglected the agricultural sector for a long time and chose to depend on ‘easy money’ that accrued from crude oil sales.

As the ‘petro-dollar’ is fast fading away, stakeholders have maintained that the only widely accepted bail out – agriculture, must be well positioned to play hitherto its role of the highest foreign exchange earner for the country.

Farmers and policy makers among others, who spoke to Food Farm News on the implication of the falling oil price, were unanimous in their views, maintaining that the development was ‘good tidings’ for the agricultural sector.

The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) President, Architect Kabiru Ibrahim, told our reporter that “Of course, the falling oil price is a very good development; it’s a good omen for agriculture. We should take advantage of that to focus fully on agriculture in this country in order to get out of the economic mess.”

He urged the federal government to create enabling environment for the private sector to fully engage in farming and other related activities, so as to export agricultural commodities and be able to earn ‘agri-dollar’. The AFAN President added that with proper investment in agriculture, crude oil can be edged out from the dominant role it’s playing in the national economy.

Deploying agric biotechnology to end hunger in Nigeria

Hunger, analysts say, should be really seen by many people as the greatest of all violence against humanity, just like Mahatma Ghandi of India did long time ago, there is need for a genuine and total war to be declared against it in countries of the world where it is biting hard.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, from Africa to Asia and Latin America to the Near East, there are 805 million people in the world who do not get enough food to eat for a normal active life.

Experts maintain that hunger is the biggest single risk to global health and must be conquered to ensure healthy living and productive life. Even as concerned authorities in Nigeria insist that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing hunger by half in 2015 has been achieved, it is strongly believed that many Nigerians still go to bed on empty stomachs.

In order to properly fight the war against hunger in Nigeria, agricultural biotechnology researchers maintain that the most needed weapon is genetic engineering, which can be deployed to generate crop varieties and animal breeds with higher yield and nutritional content, resistant to pest, diseases, drought and flood among others.

One of the researchers, Malam Muhammad Umar Lawan, a plant breeder with the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR), Zaria in Kaduna State, told our reporter that for Nigeria to be food secured and hunger free, agricultural biotechnology must be used to produce genetically modified (GM) foods to feed the teeming population.

“Let’s tell ourselves the truth; in crops where conventional breeding doesn’t work, we have to apply genetic engineering. It is scientific. GM foods is not only about food security and hunger, but will yield more income to the nation, lead to reduction in cost of production and improve nutritional content of crops to tackle health issues especially among women and children,” the researcher pointed out.

Lawan maintained that GM foods are safe as all rules are strictly adhered to by researchers, adding that the foods will properly address all the indices of food security including quantity, quality, availability and affordability if well positioned by the government and other stakeholders.

According to the Country Coordinator of Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB), Mrs. Rose M. Gidado, who is a microbiologist and director with the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), to get a food secure Africa including Nigeria, “conventional agric cannot do it alone, we need agric biotechnology as well.”

Mrs Gidado said all stakeholders must be well informed about agricultural biotechnology and GM foods so as to allay perceived fears, misconceptions and opposition among people.

The Country Coordinator said GM foods were science based, stressing that the mounting opposition against it were due to various reasons including business interests of some agrochemical and fertilizer producers, who are afraid of losing market if crop varieties that don’t depend on their products are introduced.

She, however, pointed out that application of agricultural biotechnology in Nigeria depends on the passage of the bio-safety bill by the National Assembly and its eventual signing into law by the President.

“Without the bio-safety bill, all our agricultural biotechnology work will be in vain. We call on the law makers to pass the bill before they leave office and urge the President not to delay in signing it into law as well,” she appealed.

The microbiologist disclosed that the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) in conjunction with Nigerian researchers, have developed genetically modified beans, cassava and sorghum, which are currently undergoing confined field trial, to help  Nigerian  farmers  overcome  various  challenges.