Harnessing untapped agricultural potential for inclusive growth

At the first convocation ceremony of Landmark University, Kwara State, recently, Akinwunmi Adesina, minister of agriculture and rural development, spoke on the progress, potentials and possibilities in Nigeria’s agriculture sector. Excerpts:

We decided to unlock our enormous potential in gas supply to manufacture fertilisers. Nigeria flares its natural gas and this has been going on for decades. It has been estimated that Nigeria’s flared natural gas supply is equivalent to 30 million metric tons urea equivalent per year. Our reforms of the fertiliser sector and the gas industrialisation policy have now combined to open up the sector to new investors. Today, $5 billion of new investments in fertiliser manufacturing are ongoing by Dangote, Indorama, Notore, and others. Nigeria expects to become a net exporter of fertilisers within three years.

We are boosting production of our local staple crops to reduce our dependency on food imports. A nation that cannot feed itself is simply at the mercy of others, subject to the volatility of global commodity markets. Today, Nigeria is feeding itself. Our rice self-sufficiency policy was directed at saving Nigeria N 356 billion annually and putting this into the hands of our rice farmers and rural communities.

Against all odds, we are succeeding. Within three years, our national paddy rice production rose by an extra 7 million metric MT. The number of integrated modern rice mills in the country rose from just one in 2011, to 18 by 2014, all processing the local paddy into high quality finished rice. President Goodluck Jonathan recently commissioned a 210,000MT capacity rice mill by Olam Nigeria, the largest in Africa. High-quality and well-packaged Nigerian rice is now in the market, including Quarra Rice here in Kwara State, Umza rice, Ebony super rice, Eko rice, Mikap rice, Ashi rice, Queen of the Niger and Mama’s Pride from Olam. Nigerians eat our high quality local rice, but do not know. We have totally changed the quality. You may wish to know that Stallion “Shinkafa rice” and “Stallion super” are all locally milled rice from Nigeria, not imported. Our expanded local rice production has added N 750 billion to the economy, with over N 407 billion as net incomes to farmers and rice processors, and boosted rural economy by 360,000 jobs. Soon, Nigeria will be a net-exporter of rice.

We are turning our comparative advantage as the world’s largest producer of cassava into absolute competitive advantage. Our goal is to soon become the largest processor of cassava in the world, with the use of cassava for flour to partially substitute for imported wheat flour in bread and confectioneries, starch, sweeteners, chips and ethanol.

Thirty bakeries, including the largest international supermarket chains, Shoprite and Park and Shop, now regularly sell cassava-wheat flour bread. This alone will save us over N 125 billion in foreign exchange on wheat imports and instead put this in the pockets of our farmers and local processors. Work is ongoing to establish large-scale high quality cassava processing plants to boost the production, reliability of supply and lower cost of high quality cassava flour.

Nigeria is the second largest producer of citrus in the world, the largest producer of pineapples, mangoes and tomatoes in Africa. But we import orange juice and concentrates from South Africa and tomato paste from Latin America and China. That is now rapidly changing. A number of private investors now invest in horticulture. Teragro, a local private firm, has established a $10 million plant to process oranges into concentrate. Dansa Foods, another local private firm, is investing $35 million in the establishment of a tomato processing plant in Kano. The company is also investing $45 million to set up a 6,000-hectare pineapple plantation and processing plant in Cross Rivers State.

The Federal Government is restoring Nigeria’s lost glory in palm oil production. This involves re-capitalising our plantations by providing 9 million high yielding improved seedlings of oil palm to smallholder farmers and plantation estates in the country – free of charge. Private sector investments are expanding with new palm oil processing plants. Today, palm oil processing companies, Okomu and Presco are two of the best performing company stocks on the Nigeria Stock Exchange.

We are revamping our cocoa plantations, replacing old trees with high yielding cocoa hybrids that give farmers five times the yields they currently obtain. Over the past two years, we have distributed 1.1 million pods or 39 million seedlings, free of charge to farmers, enough to plant 40,000 ha of new cocoa fields. Foreign exchange earning from our cocoa exports has grown from $900 million in 2012 to $1.2 billion in 2013 and we expect to reach $1.5 billion in 2014. The cocoa revolution in Nigeria is receiving global attention, as Hershey, one of the largest chocolate companies in the world, has invested $20 million to procure cocoa from over 20,000 certified cocoa farmers in Nigeria. Nigeria has also launched into local manufacturing of Nigerian chocolates through a strategic partnership with a US-based company, a first in the history of Nigeria.

We are working hard to drastically mechanise our agriculture from reliance on hoes and cutlasses. Hoes and cutlasses are for museums, not for modern agriculture. To allow farmers to acquire and or lease modern mechanised machinery, we have launched 600 Agricultural Equipment Hiring Enterprises, run by the private sector, to provide full complements of tractors and pre- and post-harvest machinery to farmers. Farmers will be provided subsidised mechanised services via electronic vouchers on their mobile phones, for mechanisation support, to allow them to hire agricultural machinery from private sector operators. These centres will create employment for agricultural engineers, as operators, managers or owners of agricultural mechanisation centres.