Post by Admin on Nov 4, 2014 12:35:06 GMT
Alhaji Yusuf A. Kibiya is a farmer and former Kano State Commissioner for Agriculture. He spoke in this interview on the bane of the agricultural sector and the way forward. Excerpts:
What have you been doing since you left Kano Ministry Agriculture in 2003?
An agronomist, I have since returned to farming. My farms which are about 50 hectares of land are in Kura and Bunkure local government areas of Kano State. I’m into the cultivation of rice, watermelon, tomatoes and other cereal crops. Annually I generate about N20 million from watermelon; you know it is an all season crop. Over 50 persons are working in my farms and this year we are expecting about 700 metric tons of rice.
When compared to farmers in Israel and other places, the output of farmers in the country is very low, what is the problem?
As an agronomist who has worked in the agricultural sector for over 30 years, I will say the biggest problem we have in the sector is lack of adequate planning and support in terms of capital investment in agricultural development. Over the years we have been running agricultural programmes on ad hoc basis and leaders, especially governors in the North, have done a lot of disservice to the agriculture sector by not providing the required support to the sector.
Late Governor of Kano state, Audu Bako of blessed memory did a wonderful job in the sector. Many years after his tenure farmers are still praying for him because of the level of investment he made in infrastructural development of the agricultural sector in the state. Look at his irrigation, poultry and livestock programmes that are enduring till today. These are things that government should be doing; they should work on areas where they have comparative advantage. They should look at the cropping pattern of their farmers and support them.
There is urgent need for the research and development of seeds but unfortunately we have no credible research that will give you seeds that will perform wonderfully for farmers. We had that in Kano when the SASAKAWA group came and what they did was to give technical support to farmers and the capacity of farmers rose from 2.5 tons in some areas to 10 tons.
We have to support the farmers with inputs, I mean seeds and fertiliser. The input should be given to the farmers on time not at the dying minute. Investment in the agricultural sector has gone down over the years. We no longer have extension workers, advisers and what have you that were everywhere in the past advising farmers on how best to cultivate their lands. Over the years, the Malamin Gona who were the advisers of farmers have gone.
Seeds have to be developed locally if we really want to improve the output of our farmers. Also, fertilisers are the simplest input in farming and we all know the politics in it now.
Government has no business in purchasing fertilisers; farmers should be allowed to have choice. Farmers should be allowed to go to the market and buy fertiliser just the way they buy sugar, maggi and salt. Now there are so many protocols associated with fertiliser distribution and government cannot provide the required two to three million tons of fertiliser annually. We seldom get up to 600,000 tons of the commodity supplied but if we allow free enterprise to prevail there won’t be any fertiliser problem again in the country.
When late Abacha banned the importation of fertiliser, so many local companies came and participated in the business and up to 1998, before the 1999 elections, there was no much problem of fertiliser. At all the fertiliser depots across the North, the commodity was available at good price; the only problem then was quality control. Government should have concentrated on quality control and allow companies to continue the fertiliser business. But it was not so, soon after the civilian administration came in, government went back to the business of fertiliser and the problems returned.
Government should also provide marketing opportunity to address the problem of storage and glut. Government should look into the problem of processing and packaging. In the 80s, Kano State government through its company, KASCO was importing sma
ll processing machines for rice farmers in Kura area of the state and it was because of this we had many rice mills. Small scale industries are the key to the development of agriculture and not larger ones. Governors are always looking for high capital projects in order to impress their electorate but it is not good for the sector.
You talked about areas of comparative advantage. Kano and its environs played significant role in the groundnut pyramids, contributing to the GDP of the country at that time. Now it has vanished and we are even importing groundnut oil. How can this be reversed?
You see, people kept talking about groundnut pyramids without considering the reality on ground. The groundnut pyramid was a programme deliberately conceived by the British administration. The groundnuts were packed and arranged in pyramids solely for exports to Europe. If you recall in those years, farmers were engaged in the cultivation of cash crops and the population of Nigeria then was not this much. When I was Commissioner for Agriculture in Kano, we did a survey and we discovered that we had over 80 groundnut milling companies, not to talk of small ones. Also, consumption of groundnut has drastically increased because of the population explosion and of course the cultivation of the crop due to oil has negatively gone down like the production of other cash crops in the country.
Also, there is no credible research programme on groundnut seeds in the country. In a nutshell, you cannot see the pyramid as it was then because locally the consumption is high, milling companies are everywhere and of course cultivation has gone down very low.
What have you been doing since you left Kano Ministry Agriculture in 2003?
An agronomist, I have since returned to farming. My farms which are about 50 hectares of land are in Kura and Bunkure local government areas of Kano State. I’m into the cultivation of rice, watermelon, tomatoes and other cereal crops. Annually I generate about N20 million from watermelon; you know it is an all season crop. Over 50 persons are working in my farms and this year we are expecting about 700 metric tons of rice.
When compared to farmers in Israel and other places, the output of farmers in the country is very low, what is the problem?
As an agronomist who has worked in the agricultural sector for over 30 years, I will say the biggest problem we have in the sector is lack of adequate planning and support in terms of capital investment in agricultural development. Over the years we have been running agricultural programmes on ad hoc basis and leaders, especially governors in the North, have done a lot of disservice to the agriculture sector by not providing the required support to the sector.
Late Governor of Kano state, Audu Bako of blessed memory did a wonderful job in the sector. Many years after his tenure farmers are still praying for him because of the level of investment he made in infrastructural development of the agricultural sector in the state. Look at his irrigation, poultry and livestock programmes that are enduring till today. These are things that government should be doing; they should work on areas where they have comparative advantage. They should look at the cropping pattern of their farmers and support them.
There is urgent need for the research and development of seeds but unfortunately we have no credible research that will give you seeds that will perform wonderfully for farmers. We had that in Kano when the SASAKAWA group came and what they did was to give technical support to farmers and the capacity of farmers rose from 2.5 tons in some areas to 10 tons.
We have to support the farmers with inputs, I mean seeds and fertiliser. The input should be given to the farmers on time not at the dying minute. Investment in the agricultural sector has gone down over the years. We no longer have extension workers, advisers and what have you that were everywhere in the past advising farmers on how best to cultivate their lands. Over the years, the Malamin Gona who were the advisers of farmers have gone.
Seeds have to be developed locally if we really want to improve the output of our farmers. Also, fertilisers are the simplest input in farming and we all know the politics in it now.
Government has no business in purchasing fertilisers; farmers should be allowed to have choice. Farmers should be allowed to go to the market and buy fertiliser just the way they buy sugar, maggi and salt. Now there are so many protocols associated with fertiliser distribution and government cannot provide the required two to three million tons of fertiliser annually. We seldom get up to 600,000 tons of the commodity supplied but if we allow free enterprise to prevail there won’t be any fertiliser problem again in the country.
When late Abacha banned the importation of fertiliser, so many local companies came and participated in the business and up to 1998, before the 1999 elections, there was no much problem of fertiliser. At all the fertiliser depots across the North, the commodity was available at good price; the only problem then was quality control. Government should have concentrated on quality control and allow companies to continue the fertiliser business. But it was not so, soon after the civilian administration came in, government went back to the business of fertiliser and the problems returned.
Government should also provide marketing opportunity to address the problem of storage and glut. Government should look into the problem of processing and packaging. In the 80s, Kano State government through its company, KASCO was importing sma
ll processing machines for rice farmers in Kura area of the state and it was because of this we had many rice mills. Small scale industries are the key to the development of agriculture and not larger ones. Governors are always looking for high capital projects in order to impress their electorate but it is not good for the sector.You talked about areas of comparative advantage. Kano and its environs played significant role in the groundnut pyramids, contributing to the GDP of the country at that time. Now it has vanished and we are even importing groundnut oil. How can this be reversed?
You see, people kept talking about groundnut pyramids without considering the reality on ground. The groundnut pyramid was a programme deliberately conceived by the British administration. The groundnuts were packed and arranged in pyramids solely for exports to Europe. If you recall in those years, farmers were engaged in the cultivation of cash crops and the population of Nigeria then was not this much. When I was Commissioner for Agriculture in Kano, we did a survey and we discovered that we had over 80 groundnut milling companies, not to talk of small ones. Also, consumption of groundnut has drastically increased because of the population explosion and of course the cultivation of the crop due to oil has negatively gone down like the production of other cash crops in the country.
Also, there is no credible research programme on groundnut seeds in the country. In a nutshell, you cannot see the pyramid as it was then because locally the consumption is high, milling companies are everywhere and of course cultivation has gone down very low.