Farmers Must Treat Agriculture As A Business – Kabiru

Mohammed Kabiru

The president of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Mohammed Kabiru, in this interview with    Ruth Tene Natsa, expresses great optimism that Nigerian farmers would excel if they chose to treat agriculture as a business.


What hope do you see for the Nigerian farmer in 2016?
What I have seen, from  pronouncements from the government and the budgets  is that the the government is ready to fund agriculture and as such there is hope for Nigerian farmers.
The only thing is that the farmer must treat what he does as a business to be able to harness it because I do not think anybody will get anything on a platter of gold; nobody is going to spoon-feed, you because you are a farmer.

I will encourage the government to at least be sure that whatever is earmarked in the budget  is expended  accordingly unlike before when the budget will allocate 27 per cent but it will not be fully expended. So they must implement this budget first and foremost and apply the resources judiciously. Honest people should be put in charge of the implementation because if you remove corruption from the implementation of the budget, the Nigerian farmer will smile.

There are speculations of food scarcity in 2016, what is your opinion on that?
Those are just pessimists speaking. The rains in some part of Nigeria were late in coming but were also enough for the farm produce that are normally produced in Nigeria. Rather than hunger, I believe there will be enough food and prosperity for the nation. Also the privilege of indirectly importing food used as staples, such as corn, is no longer tenable.

Before a tonne from Brazil cost about $300, today in Nigeria, a tonne is not even up to $200 dollars and so it is not profitable to import from Brazil anymore, making Nigeria to be on its way to self-sufficiency.
Some people are agitating for the devaluation of the naira; it is not tenable and realistic because if you produce your food locally and cannot buy from foreign lands, then you will make do with what you have.

 In the 1960s, Nigeria produced all its food locally, the culture of consuming what you do not produce is what leads to high foreign exchange, it is people who want to import luxury items or go to Dubai for holiday that want the devaluation of the naira, but I believe that the dignity of Nigerians lies on consuming what we produce locally.

What is your reaction to the fact that this government may not continue with the GES?
The truth is that as the president of the AFAN, we were never involved in the GES. In fact most beneficiaries of the GES were party stalwarts and not farmers and as such the GES had no real impact.

The GES would only be beneficial to people if it is modified. For instance, the federal government said that it had registered 14.5 million farmers. That is a far cry from the number of farmers in this country because the farmers in this country are four times more than that number. So if only 14.5 million are registered and getting subsidised inputs, then it has no real impact. In fact the GES to me connotes subsistence farming.

If there was any value which the GES added, modifying it will add more value by making sure that the actual farmers are given the necessary and needed inputs and not handed handouts. If, for instance, I have two hectares of land and I need 11-12 bags of fertilisers and you give me two bags, you have not helped me. In place of that a system of crop intensification, whereby the farmers are taught best practices in farming using what they have been using will enhance productivity.

If we have more of small holder farmers should we not then encourage subsistent farming?
No, subsistence means poverty and it should not be encouraged. A smallholder can do farming that can help him and his family and he is a key driver to the agro economy. So you cannot talk of agriculture without looking at the smallholder farmer and you have to create an enabling environment for him to get out of subsistence farming and that is getting out of poverty. This  means whatever he plants, he harvest, stores and sells without the produce getting bad.

Talking about helping the farmers, what are your recommendations?
Extension work should be digitalised; we cannot employ the requisite number of extension workers, but through digital extension farmers can be gathered in their communities through TV viewing centres or cinemas  and be shown what is happening in India and Ethiopia, but it is not happening in Nigeria. I have reached out to some state governments, if they key into it, they will carve a niche and others will model after them.

What are your recommendations to state governors on developing agriculture?
They have no choice, in fact it is a sine qua none for food security. If they do not feed the people, you will have skirmishes like you had in the North East, so every governor in Nigeria should pay attention to agriculture because that is a way of saying good bye to poverty. It is a must and every sensible person should know that because without food for the people you govern, you cannot control them. 

Is the AFAN going to be involved in the federal government’s school feeding programme?
The AFAN per se may not be necessarily involved but farmers in the states which partake in school feeding programmes will have to buy the items from the farmers. So we cannot just say that the AFAN as an association will participate.

The AFAN is just a convenient platform for farmers to aggregate and that is the way it should be. We should not just be a monopoly, what of farmers who do not belong to the AFAN? Our interest is just for the good of farmers.

What is your advice to the minister of agriculture?
The way to go is not to do everything. Identify your competencies, stick with them, take them to another level, then take the next step. In other words he has to prioritise.

Take for instance what happened recently in the cassava value chain when some people came and said that they have to take the right of place; you cannot say that when it is not the staple in some states. So what he needs to do is to take a random crop/commodities and strive to make them to work. That is how it should be because all components that make up Nigeria are important.

What is your view on the federal government not meeting the Maputo Declaration?
What we should look at is all the interventions geared towards agriculture, put them together  and look at the percentage instead of expecting that all the 10 per cent  be allocated to agriculture. It is only when we aggregate all of those interventions that we can then say if the 10 per cent was met or not.