Stakeholders Urge FG to maintain Public-Private Initiatives

Stakeholders on yam production have called upon the Federal Government to support the setting up of public-private initiative to facilitate an emerging tissue culture based yam seed in the country.

This was contained in communiqué arising from a Yam Seed Production workshop held at the University of Ibadan, Oyo state and made available to the newsmen recently.

The three-page communiqué was signed by the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academics), University of Ibadan, Prof. Gbemisola Oke, and the workshop facilitator, Dr Morufat Balogun, Geneticist in the Department of Crop Protection and Environmental Biology.

The yam stakeholders noted that there was limited availability of yam seeds from Temporary Immersion Bioreactors, adding that scarcity of planting materials is a major constraint to yam production in Nigeria.

“In order to allay fear or reservations towards acceptability of tissue culture produced seed yam among other farmers as well as the general populace, there should be advocacy for acceptability of the technology through different media.’’, it said.

The communiqué stated that stakeholders had observed that there was need to use TIBs to speed up the production of planting materials also known as clean seed yam.

According to the communiqué, yam is an important food crop in Nigeria and the country is the world’s largest producer.

“Having identified possible market glut that might result from rapid propagation technologies, the workshop opined that NRCRI and National Stored Product Research Institute (NSPRI) should develop and advocate for improved harvesting, post-harvest handling and storage’’
The workshop also called on the Federal government to as a matter of priority; revitalize the yam export market in line with the alternative revenue drive of the present administration.

It equally canvassed for youth training and development, using National Youth Corps members in other to overcome inadequate skill and low farmers’ level of education on the novel seed production system.

This, the communiqué added, would reduce rural-urban drift and expansion of farmland in seed yam production.

“As part of strategies to reduce cost and fatigue associated with yam production, gender responsibility should be identified, so that there will be more interest in farming’’, it added.

The stakeholders also recognised irregular electricity and availability of materials and reagents as threats to sustainable adoption of the technology.

To this end, it urged researchers to seek alternative, environment-friendly and cheaper sources of power and reagents.

“In addition, there should be specialization for different levels of production chain to accommodate high, medium and low skilled labour’’, the communiqué stressed.

It also called for increased automation in the technology to reduce possibility of human error which could cause huge losses and also identified lack of sustainable availability of funds to maintain the technology after set-up as a main threat to its use.

The workshop recommended that the government should put in place policies to support farmers’ cooperatives while also removing bottlenecks in assessing the existing agriculture loans.

“The workshop recognised farmers as being disadvantaged by lack of price regulation and low bargaining power and recommends the creation of yam marketing board, which will, among others, regulate the price of yam, and incorporate government interventions’’, it added.