There is need to support realization of potentials of high yielding crops with fertilizer---Agric minister

Chief Audu Ogbeh

* Nigeria will save N1.71b if adopts UDP

The minister of agriculture and rural development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has said it was important to recognize the need to support the realization of the genetic potential of our increasingly high-yielding crop varieties being adopted by Nigeria’s numerous farmers with appropriate fertilizer.

He said this when Feed The Future, a United States government's global hunger and food security initiative in partnership with the Nigerian government held the first policy dialogue in Abuja.

He said that the country has commenced the production of soil-specific fertilizer formulation in collaboration with international Fertilizer Development Centre ( IFDC) , Feed the Future and Agtho Fertilizer company based in Lafia, Nassarawa State to be used on basis of data available from the national soil fertility maps. 

Ogbeh , who was represented by Professor Victor Chude, noted that with the importance of the genetic and the right soil nutrient that goes hand in hand for optimal crop yield, the country still faced a major challenge of not getting the appropriate fertilizer blends in the desired dosage and on time adding that ensuring farmers access to fertilizer blends, improved seeds and other productivity- enhancing technologies at affordable prices are all necessary as well as  bringing the blending facilities close to the end users will further help to reduce transaction cost and the ultimate prices of the fertilizer blend. 

Foodfarmnew spoke with Dr. Kofi Debrah (Chief of Party for the Feed the Future Nigeria Agro inputs Project and  IFDC) who disclosed that Nigeria use fertilizer based on only three primary nutrient, nitrogen, phosphate, potassium, which he said is not good enough, because the plant needs more than the primary nutrient, adding  that meeting up with the countries need " we worked with the National Program for Food Security (NPFS),for soil analysis, using the soil doctor kit that the ministry has, we found all the soil need in order to grow the plant grow very well, so have added sulphur and zinc which are secondary and micro nutrient to the fertilizer that is usually available and we used this new blended fertilizer, which was blended by Agtho" he said. 

 He continued that the Urea Deep Placement (UDP) technology has been tested across the northern part of Nigeria, in the dry and wet seasons, which produced extra 2.2 metric tons per hectare in addition.

 He noted that the massive yield gained from testing the UDP is responsible for the coming together of farmers, scientist, policy makers, researcher and other relevant stakeholders on awareness creation, and introduction to the use of the quality seeds, blended fertilizers, and the management practices so that they can have increased yield year round.

 He said that Nigeria had invested a lot into the sector, through interventions and was yet to gain its sufficiency in food production, because either the farmers were not doing the right thing or they are not using the right technology.

 He disclosed that the workshop was open to the farmers to tap into the opportunity of accessing the input, use them correctly and if adopted on a wide scale, the sector will experience huge production, where farmers harvest more, and which would in estimate help the country to save USD196million in import substitution if indeed farmers use this technology on 5 percent of the total rice area in Nigeria, which is about 150,000 hectares if the technologies area applied judiciously.

 He continued that the organization had been able to build the capacity of agro input dealers, who are much closer to the farmers than the fertilizer manufactures. "We are building their skill to know the right product to sell, the quality seeds, the right blends of fertilizer that fits the crop, matching the numbers of farmers with the number of people that we have trained while creating a new brand of agro-entrepreneur that are in the communities.

 He said the agro-entrepreneurs would “be giving the farmers technical advice as well as advice on how to grow crops and then they will be buying the quality produce from this people, if it goes as planned, farmers will be closer to the point of sell and will be previewed to all kinds of technical advice from the agro-entrepreneur all year round,” he said.

 Professor Victor Chude told Foodfarmnews that the awareness rate of the new technology has gone 30percent and assured that efforts were being made to ensure that the fertilizers to  be supplied through the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI} were the ones that crops would respond to , that would end up in increased crop productivity.

He said the “Workshop was meant to call the attention of all stakeholders, policy makers, end users for fertilizers and seeds on the need to use the right type of fertilizer at the right time, right quantity and using improved varieties of seeds so that value for money will be gotten, to ensure increased productivity of crops that would translate to improvement in food security in this country”.

Foodfarmnews also spoke with the president, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Architect Kabiru Ibrahim who said that with the current revolution on fertilizer, farmers could afford to buy.

He said “there is a revolution going on now that fertilizer would be available from the work AFAN was doing to produce one million metric tons of NPK from the price which is maximum of  N5,500; the farmers can buy this” adding “aside from that, what we have been exposed  to today, the dialogue is very promising to agricultural production, and the farmers welcome that , because it would make us rich  and we would be able to feed Nigeria, our neighbor’s as well export.”

He assured that the members would welcome this development, embrace all the production enhancement technology that are there and look forward to seeing fertilizers on the shelves and all over the place, so that it would be commonplace like Coca Cola and that is what is going to happen if we keep the tempo, adding “this will enhance food security.”

The director, office of economic growth and environment, USAID Nigeria- Ms Roseann Casey said that the fertilizer was key to the economic recovery of Nigeria in the area of agriculture, to aid sufficient food production and quality food supply in the country.

The dialogue which was held at the Bolton White Hotel, Abuja brought together captains of fertilizer industry, farmers association, civil society organizations, other relevant stakeholders and partners who brainstormed on bringing balanced fertilizers to the Nigerian market: policy and investment implications of soil and crop-specific fertilizer blend-based technologies.