Farmers’ scribe laments politicisation, lack of direction by policy makers

·        Calls for adoption of China, Russia’s models of food processing, preservation

A scribe, Federation of Agricultural Commodity Associations of Nigeria (FACAN), Prince Peter Bakare has lamented the politicisation and lack of progress in the agriculture sector in the country. He expressed his mind in an exclusive interview he had with Foodfarmnews in Abuja.

He said policies in agriculture had not been able to translate to the one that Nigerians can physically see looking at the level of progress achieved.  “We have politicized everything relating to agriculture in the country, the current Central Bank of Nigeria’s Anchor Borrowers Programme, has missed the reason for its creation as the programme has been politicized by the staffs of the Nigerian bank. The apex bank officials will be dictating to farmers on how to spend the borrowed money even as the monies are released to farmers very late”, he bewailed.

While noting that nothing had ever worked in the sector, he said: “We have been talking about diversification for long, and looking at the past till date nothing has really changed in terms of the way we run agriculture in the country. Starting from the Obasanjo’s Operation Feed the Nation , down to the Shagari’s  Green Revolution, which didn’t actually take us nowhere, down to the Babangida’s National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) project to improve production through more land cultivations, which ended to opening our borders to rice importation and hence a dumping ground.”

He declared that the financial institutions that were to provide credit were not consciousness of the farmers’ needs, but instead were behaving like the commercial agriculture banks. “The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) is no longer functioning as a result of debts, and the commercial banks that the CBN are giving money to meet the farmers’ need are dictating to the farmers, while the input providers on the other hand issue out inputs to farmers late thereby trying to truncate the effort of the Federal Government and when we look at the quality of what we produce, it is very low. Government is really lagging behind and until we change the story before we can progress.

“Can you imagine Glyphsate and paracyote being supplied to farmers by the input producers by CBN officials’ recommendation?  Farmers will end up not being able to break even as many of them are owing bank which they are expected to pay whether they like it or not.”

The farmers’ boss, still angry, fumed: “in Nigeria there is no focus by the government on what particular direction they (the government) are heading to, look at cassava, several years now we have been going round the circle, thereby not really achieving anything tangible.”

On what should be done to move forward: “We need rethink as we have to provide the enabling environment to encourage our farmers by guaranteeing minimum price that has not even had any effect after it was transferred to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) from the Federal Ministry of Industry Trade and Investment years ago. Government must be deliberate to move the sector forward with full engagement of farmers.” 

While citing the example of China and Russia, he said: “Look at countries like China and Russia, they are both communists and socialist countries, and what they have is that the government is behind whatever progress that the farmers are making.  During our visit to Beijin, we were told that farmers were banned from planting maize because it does not grow well and if they apply fertilizer, it will make their waters get contaminated due to the chemicals in the fertilizer.  So government discouraged the farmers from growing maize, but encouraged them to grow soybeans and even create a favourable environment for the produce to be bought from farmers.”

He revealed that in Russia the input producers were well regulated by the government, “you don’t just produce and sell to the farmers, your product has to meet with the standard of the country, and nobody will allow any junk to enter into the country, but looking at Nigeria, Nigeria has turned to a dumping ground for fake inputs and lower quality inputs. The incentive that government gives is being hijacked by foreigners, and government is currently doing nothing. Government needs to develop the indigenous sector to produce what is traceable and can be monitored.”

He counselled that the government should ensure processing of produce, saying: “The concerned ministry should bring in equipments that can process cassava at a subsidized amount as we are the largest producers of cassava and there is a need for synergy between the government and the private sector so that we can achieve more.”

He also cited the example of cashew and ginger: “Over 100metric tones of cashew was exported to Vietnam raw and value was added to it by Vietnam, which was sold for many times the amount for which it was bought from Nigeria. Another example is Ginger bought by India and same thing happened because we have failed to look inward as we gave everything out without adding value, thereby making us to lack the courage to move forward. We have allowed the Chinese and the Indians to take over our market, which is uncalled for.”

On food preservation, he said his group visited Russia to look “at how we can replicate here the cold storage system, as 30 percent of produce such as fruits, vegetables and foods get wasted due to lack of storage facilities. The cold storage facility we saw in Russia is capable of preserving produce for 6-7months, without being frozen, but still remains very fresh as the facility is just to condition whatever is stored in it. We have made contacts, and we hope to work with Russia to see how the facility can be replicated here in Nigeria for our farmers to enjoy their business. We want government to upgrade the Gamma Irradiation Facility in Sheda, which is already going out of date.”

 Finally, he noted that Nigeria had not been reacting appropriately to world situation, “our reaction is so slow. The government has heard of the China and US trade war, but have done nothing, we need to take advantage of the issues relating to agriculture globally.”