NCARD: FG, stakeholders call for private sector investment in agricultural development

By Nneka Nwogwugwu

The Federal government and stakeholders in the agricultural sector have called for private sector investment in the development of Nigeria’s agricultural sector.

The stakeholders made this call at the end of the 44th Regular Meeting of the National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development (NCARD) on Thursday in Abuja.

Declaring the event open, the minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Sabo Nanono noted major contributions the present administration has achieved in developing the agric sector despite the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his remarks, he said, “The challenges brought by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, floods and insecurity has galvanized the government into setting up necessary structures (and upgrade existing ones) to address infrastructural deficiency, technology gaps, security challenges and extension inadequacy.

“As a stop-gap intervention, we launched the Agric for Food and Jobs Program, originally conceived as an input loan for smallholder farmers across several commodities including maize, rice, cotton, groundnut, sorghum, cowpea, soybean, sesame, cassava and oil-palm.

“The scheme brought into a partnership the Central Bank of Nigeria, Commodity Associations and Agricultural Platform Companies for effective facilitation. This we believe will not only improve production significantly but also aid in the off-taking of the produce while providing input at reduced price due to economy of scale.

“To ensure that the input gets to the intended farmers, we created a database for all the participating farmers in the AFJP. Unlike anything that has been done before, we set out to capture the biodata of the farmers and link this with the geographical information of their farmed plots, their crops and the volumes they produce.

“All this will feed into the monitoring and evaluation system of the project so that we can measure impact along the line. Although we initially set out to capture the data of 2.4million farmers across the country, the results from the exercise have encouraged the Economic Sustainability Plan team to expand the data capture to 10million farmers.

“This database is going to be the platform for government interventions going forward, putting an end to ghost schemes and other unscrupulous practices in the agricultural industry.”

Calling on the private sector for increased efforts in investing in the sector, Nanono noted that enquiries have been received from several international bodies on how they may participate in the National Livestock Transformation Plan either in financial or technical capacity.

According to him, a Dutch consortium which is partnering the Federal Government for the implementation of the first pilot state was able to attract a grant from their home country of Netherlands for the start-up of the National Livestock Transformation Plan pilot in Nasarawa State.

“This pilot site will serve as a hub for knowledge and skills transfer to the pastoralist community, who will be encouraged and hand-held to adopt ranching, to practice what they have learnt. The National Livestock Transformation Plan has been adjudged worldwide to be a well-conceived project which seeks to transform our livestock sector from nomadic-dependent sector into an organized ranching one.

“ To this end, 22 State and the Federal Capital Territory have registered with the NLTP Office, out of which 10 States have created their own teams which have been trained by the Federal Office. Seven of these 10 States have also earmarked about 19 Grazing Reserves for the implementation of the NLTP, with a total land size of approximately 400,00 hectares,” he added.

Highlighting other programmes introduced by his administration, he outlined that, “rice was included in the list of items for which importation facility provision (forex) was stopped since the inception of this administration.

“The dividend of that action has been improvement in the quality of rice processed within Nigeria and has improved earning for the rice farmers and placed their association, RIFAN, at a vantage point for negotiating loan deals for farmers with funding entities.

Among other achievements by the Ministry, the minister also added “we have entered into partnership with the government of Brazil through one of their foremost technology transfer institution, the Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV).

“ This partnership has yielded an Agricultural Mechanisation loan to the tune of nine hundred and ninety five million euros(€995m). This shall be granted to Nigerian entrepreneurs to establish Service Centres across all the 774 Local Governments of the country, selling services to all categories of farmers and thereby helping to improve their productivity. The service centres shall be of either a Type 1, supporting production activities; or a Type 2, supporting processing and packaging activities.

“We also have the target to improve on the export front and to this end, necessary support is being given for increase in the export of Agricultural commodities like Sesame, Hibiscus, Cotton and Sorghum. The Nigerian Export Promotion Council has been working with the Ministry of Agriculture to exploit our strategic advantage in the production of these commodities, improving our production protocols to conform with internationally acceptable standards, maintenance of an exporters’ directory and ‘Exporter certificate verification’ portal, generation of Product map and improving our visibility through the attendance of International Trade Shows. All this is geared towards improving our export profile thereby improving our Forex Earning capacity which is necessary at this period of oil market volatility.

“As part of the strategies to implement the Nigerian Correctional Service act, the Nigerian Prisons Service established farms which are to serve as training grounds to inmates serving time at the different prisons. Prison farms are essential for the new correctional services act to fulfil its aim of reforming, rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders.”

Earlier speaking, the minister of state for Agriculture, Hon. Mustapha Baba Shehuri added that the Nigerian Economy had its GDP contracted for two consecutive terms i.e 2nd and 3rd Quarters in 2020 leading to recession.

He said it was in the 4th Quarter of 2020 that the economy returned to positive growth with GDP expanding to 0.1% from negative growth of 3.6%, Agricultural Sector was part of the achievement. As a matter of fact, the local production of Maize, Rice, Cassava, Potatoes, Yam and other staples steadily increased. It is also the same story for Livestock, Fisheries and Dairy sector.

“The fact that we did not import food during the lockdown was a testimony that we can grow what we eat and eat what we produce. This unique effort in the Agricultural sector resulted in sharp decline in the Nation’s major food import bills on Rice, Wheat, Milk products and Frozen Fish.

“I salute the effort of our farmers and other stakeholders who worked under difficult and challenging environment to boost the production of our major staples,” he said.

Also speaking, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Nigeria, Fred Kafeero stated that private investors involvement in agriculture is a call for action to cushion effects of COVID-19.

Kafeero also urged that investments and technical assistance should be mobilised, adding that research in Nigeria should also be strengthened.

Also, Nigeria’s country Director, Actionaid, Ene Obi called on the private sector to approve and support the Federal Agric Ministry and state Ministries to allocate funding for Agriculture and smallholder farmers including women farmers.

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Speaking on behalf of the farmers, the president of the All farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Farouq Mudi while explaining the importance of private investment , noted that the association has started establishing projects in collaboration with the private sector.

He informed that Brains and Hammers, a real estate company is partnering with the Ministry to deepen water irrigation techniques to enhance crop production in Nigeria.

Responding to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) report, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Dr. Ernest A. Umakhihe said the meeting will give way for stakeholders to mitigate global hunger concerns in 20 nations.