We’ve 80% cocoa farmers’ data for high productivity says re-elect CAN President

CAN National President Sayina Rima, with CAN Stakeholders

In a bit to ensure increase production of Covoa from present level of 250,000 metric tons to one million in the country, the reelect president of Cocoa Association of Nigeria (CAN) Mr. Sayina Rima has said the association was able to collate about 80% data information of members across the producing states in the country at all the value chains saying all necessary information about a farmer are captured. Read the excerpt of his interview below.

Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Sayina Rima, a farmer and the leader of the entire cocoa value chain Nigeria, and i have just been re-elected as the National President of the Cocoa Association of Nigeria and am also the Vice President of the World Cocoa Producer Association Organization as I am of the opinion that the implementation of all initiatives must have the input of farmers. 

As the Re-elect President what are your mission in this new Administration?

That is interesting because we have a very low morale secretariat and industry, we’ve not been able to engage and stimulate the cocoa industry sufficiently to high productivity. Presently cocoa is the highest foreign exchange earning in agriculture and now we have a lot of initiatives and programs line up towards achieving increased productivity from present level of 250,000 metric tons to a million as we are immediately hitting the ground this time around. What we are initiating will bring back quality produce for more premiums earning like any other foreign countries. 

When we came into office, we met our cocoa discountenance with low quality and this has affected the value chain itself. But we have achieved a lot of improvements in this area. We intend to achieve increase in production and bridge the knowledge gap between research and farmers. We have over 80% of data collation of our farmers that cut across the value chains.

 The data collected includes ages of farms, farmers, location and phone numbers. We are also going to deplore the use of GPS to measure the land size as all this will help to checkmate input subsidy diversion. All these are initiatives of CAN, but we are looking out for partnership with the Federal Government and other private entity in area of GPS. With this data we can now cross check what has been done in each location and also  assert  interventions such as inputs, training and subsidized agro-chemical in every location.

 This is our focus, and we intend to do a lot more than that. We are engaging the development partners to bridge  the gap between highly technical papers to the understanding of farmers, we are breaking them down in local languages, but also following them up to get feed backs from the farmers and see how well they understand what they have been taught as it is  part of our ongoing programme in the Price Management Project in collaboration with the International  Cocoa Organization (ICO), the Common Fund for Community (CFC)  established by United Nation Body with four components, and Nigeria seems to have certified a lot of the project objectives. This is possible because it was managed by farmers and stakeholders themselves as mutual gap among stakeholders has been bridged. 

Why the consumption rate of cocoa is very low in Nigeria despite its health importance?

The first aspect is the importance of consuming Cocoa. Cocoa is one of the food products with the highest anti-oxidant, it is one of the world healthiest food to take.  Cocoa has more than 250 food properties and research is still finding more. 

The second part of it that you talked about is the local consumption, which is exciting, because local consumption is value addition, it will create employment, but how do you start local consumption without talking about the children who should be the major beneficiaries of cocoa health benefits. We all have brand addiction, which means we all grew up with foods we know too well, while the association over ten years now has consistently promoted the consumption of cocoa among adults, it’s becoming clearer that the effect is not much because while we are growing it was not part of our diet. 

You know that there are addictions to some food, a Westerner is use to vegetable and Iyan (Pounded Yam),  South-South person is Affang and Edikikor, the Easterner is used to Urhar, while Northerner is  tuwo. Now these are the type of food that the children grow up with. What did we do, we took our initiative to the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, asking for school feeding program. It is a program that will ensure that Nigerian schools are able to provide cocoa during the break hour for children free of charge. 

 It was a project the former President Obasanjo welcome but the implementation could not take place, no other president has found it necessary to revive the initiative. I give you another instance, if 20% of Nigerians start consuming cocoa powder today, 250grams in a month, we will have taken well over 100,000 metrics tons, out of the market, that means in the international market the law of demand and supply will come to play, that means there will be less going to the international market, and what will it do to price, it will take price higher which is what will make the farmers grows more cocoa. Cocoa is highly labor intensive and we are fighting for a bench mark, because we don’t consume it, so we are not even a determinant of the price. We need to make a policy that will ensure our children consuming cocoa because of its inherent health benefits as we will always have a better pricing for our cocoa thereby create employment opportunities at the  entire value chains.

What is the importance of Cocoa to the Nigerian economy?

There has been lack of synergy between the public and the private sector, after the discovery of oil; you will agree with me that government’s neglect of agriculture especially cocoa has got a negative impact on our economy. My anger in this is that cocoa has built the economy in the time past as the resources of cocoa built oil.  We are the second largest producer of cocoa in the world at over 4000 and something thousand metric tons, as at then which represented 27% of the world supply. In the world we are the largest food producing country, we produce 5% out of 4.3million to 4.4million metric tons of the world cocoa. In Nigeria we produce 250-300 metric tons of cocoa, and of what percentage is that to the world’s market, which puts us between 5-6% of the world’s production.

When discussing the importance of cocoa  to our economy, we should also look at what should the government do or what should we do to be able to regain our pride of place, well after the discovery of oil, you and I know that it is easier to get a million youths into politics in less than one hour than to get five into agriculture. 

This is because we’ve been debased to such an extent that young agricultural graduates do not really want to practice what he has gone to school to learn. You can image a country where tooth pick is being imported, it’s a shame and I totally agree with President Buhari on the need to re-engineer agriculture and make it the highest foreign exchange earnings.

 Nigerians eat chocolate and how rich are most of these chocolates that we eat, because cocoa rich chocolates are expensive chocolates, how many of us know what dark chocolates is, that is exactly the knowledge gap we have, but even as much as you tell them we need government to join hands with the private sectors so as to be able to make sure that we sensitize people on the health benefit of consuming cocoa and its economic importance to us as a nation.

 The moment we go back to agriculture and to cocoa in particular there will be stimulation in our economy as a ton of the produce is $35,000 knowing well that FOREX is very high in rate. My take on this is that the most important crop to grow right now is cocoa, though it may be labor intensive but there should be incentives from the government to the true stakeholders, but not money that will end up in politicians pockets.

As an association what has been your major challenges?

As an association the major challenge are the bridging in communication gap between the public sector and the private sector,  lack of extension officers, then the high cost of agro-chemicals, high level of rural-urban migration of the youths. The average age of the farmer especially in the southwest is about 60years coupled  non interest of growing youths in farming as they prefer politics than farming. But I always tell most of the youths that the most sustainable way to go is in agriculture.   

The banks in Nigeria default in funding tree crop agriculture. If you are given 50million naira to go into farming which they hardly do, they want to only fund seed multiplication not  cocoa stem that  stay in the farm for forty years and in two years  have not started fruiting We also have corruption challenges as high revenue is being generated by cocoa into the state and national purses. 

We are the first to cry out about the last administration agro-chemicals not reaching farmers but we were tagged rebels and never supporting government.We contribute so much from the local government to the State and Federal government in terms of revenue that is paid to cocoa running billions of naira. I will tell you as a state, Cross-River has over 350million Naira that is paid to government annually from the local government to state.