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Nigerian agriculture: The efficiency factor |
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Why is it that, especially in the last few years, agricultural products are becoming more and more unaffordable to most Nigerians? In the first place, nature did not cheat Nigeria on the availability of arable land - it is estimated that 82 million hectares out of Nigeria's total land area of about 91 million hectares are arable. Moreover, the agro-climatic conditions are suitable to provide the ever-increasing population of Nigeria with affordable agricultural products without necessarily depending on foreign imports. Presently, there are some talks about urban migration adversely affecting the agricultural activities of rural areas, but about 54% (more than 20 million people) of the labor force is still engaged in agriculture. This figure is significantly higher than in most countries that export food products today. Where is the problem then? This is the question that worries most Nigerians. It worries them because agricultural products are first and foremost food products, without which it is simply impossible to survive. Insufficiency of these products or increase on their prices unfavorably affects the standard of living of the population. Currently, 75% of the income of most Nigerians is spent on food products alone. Of course, we do not have the food crisis as currently in Somali, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, Uganda and Sierra Leone, where it is estimated that several millions of people are at risk of starvation. This article, therefore, is not about how to fight starvation in Nigeria. It is about comparing what we have now with what we should have had (and could have had), if only we could efficiently use the available arable land and labor. According to available statistics (FAOSTAT Agriculture Data, 1999), the domestic production of some food crops (rice, millet, sorghum, groundnut, etc) in Nigeria has been expanding at a phenomenal rate since 1990. For example, about 2.6 million tons of groundnut (in shells) was harvested in 1998, which is 1 million tons more than what was harvested in 1995 (1.6 million tons), and almost 2 millions tons more than the harvest of 1990 (0.992 million tons). This increase in groundnut production is attributed to expanded area under groundnut, which increased from 0.7 million ha in 1990 to about 1.8 million ha in 1995 and to about 2.3 million ha in 1998. Another example of a "success story" is rice production in Nigeria. About 2.5 million tons of paddy rice was harvested in 1990 on 1.2 million ha of land. The paddy rice harvest increased to 2.9 million tons in 1995 on an expanded area of 1.8 million ha. By 1998, the area under rice increased to about 2.1 million ha, from which over 3.3 million tons of paddy rice was harvested.
Success story indeed! Agreed that Nigeria is a "developing third world country", while USA and Japan are "developed, superpowers", but what about Egypt (a "developing third world country"), which, in 1998, devoted just about 0.6 million ha (about 350% less than Nigeria) for rice production and 'smiled' home with a paddy rice harvest of about 4.5 million tons of, 1.2 millions tons more than what Nigeria got from its 'giant' rice area! This truly success story of rice production in Egypt should convince you the more that keeping the status quo, especially in the area of crop production, is not in our best national interest. What am I trying to say? You see, while the average rice yield in Egypt is 8.0 T/ha, in Nigeria - it's a paltry 1.6 T/ha. Nigeria is capable of producing more than 12 million tons (and not the current 3.3 million tons) of rice on the same area of land (2.1 million ha), if she takes necessary steps to increase the average yield of rice from the 1.6 T/ha to at least 6.0 T/ha. The same logic applies to all major food crops in Nigeria: improving the productivity (yield) of food crops, rather than just expanding the area of their cultivation, would drastically increase the output of food crops in Nigeria. Complex of factors are responsible for the low crop productivity in Nigeria, some of which include low-yield farming systems, biotic/abiotic stress conditions, insufficient improved crop varieties. Investing heavily in agricultural research could be responsible for the relatively higher yield of food crops in Japan, USA, Holland, China, Egypt and other countries. In the U.S., for example, statistics show that every tax dollar invested in the U.S. agricultural research has paid back at least $1.35 (Agriculture Fact Book 98). Today, in U.S., a farm is defined as any establishment from which $1,000 (about 0.1 million naira) or more of agricultural products was sold or would normally be sold during the year. In Nigeria, due to obvious reasons, it would take a long time to adopt the U.S. definition of a farm. Research in the area of farming systems has received adequate attention in recent years in most agricultural research establishments in Nigeria, but the problem remains lack of enough funds to intensify research in this area and extend the research findings to farmers. Crop stress physiology is relatively new but very important for improvement of crop productivity in the various agro-climatic zones of Nigeria. The problem of soil iron toxicity in eastern Nigeria, for example, poses a serious set back to soybean production in that region, since this crop is generally highly susceptible to iron toxicity. Various innovative techniques have emerged in the area of crop stress physiology for early diagnosis of plant stress and the study of plant defense reactions to stress. The discovery of heat-shock proteins, reactive oxygen species (oxidative burst), etc in plants cells under stress have contributed in developing measures to improve the capability of plants to withstand stress conditions. Oxidative burst, for example, is currently being used in most advanced laboratories of the agricultural world as a crude gauge of plant resistance to stress, but in Nigeria, very few researchers are trained in this vital area of crop stress physiology. Nigeria has performed relatively better in the area of crop breeding. Through conventional breeding techniques, lots of varieties of different crops were produced for the various agro-climatic zones of Nigeria. ITA 257 is a popular improved 'made-in-Nigeria' rice variety; Samsorg - an improved sorghum variety; Samsoy - soybean variety; Sanora 63 - wheat variety, to mention but just a few. However, breeders agree that the application of biotechnological methods would go a long way in accelerating crop breeding process, especially in the area of disease resistance. Plant microspore culture, protoplast fusion, embryo rescue, somaclonal variation, in-vitro cellular breeding and genetic markers are popular aspects of plant biotechnology that could easily be adapted in Nigeria for the production of disease-resistant high-yielding crop varieties with superior food quality for each of the agro-climatic zones. There is an urgent need, therefore, for increased investment in agricultural research in Nigeria, especially in the areas of crop breeding, crop stress physiology and farming systems. With this and other necessary factors in place, Nigeria would be able to solve the efficiency factor, improve agricultural exports and thus increase her foreign exchange reserve. An illustration might help here. It is earlier mentioned here that Nigeria is capable of producing more than 12 million tons (and not the current 3.3 million tons) of rice on the same area of land (2.1 million ha), if she takes necessary steps to increase the average yield of rice from the 1.6 T/ha to at least 6.0 T/ha. In Nigeria, statistics has it that an estimated 2.1 million tons of rice is consumed annually. This would leave almost 10 million tons from the hypothetical 12 million tons that could be produced with better farming systems and improved rice varieties. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that import of about 4 million tons of rice a year drains about US$1 billion from foreign exchange earnings. If you use this information to estimate the amount of foreign exchange Nigeria would gain from exporting the hypothetical extra 10 million tons of rice, you would come to agree that Nigeria could be an agricultural superpower, if it really wants to. And it's not just in rice production, but also groundnut, cocoa, soybean, maize, millet, sorghum, yams, cassava, cotton and lot of others. We all know that the beginning of Nigeria's development depended on agriculture, and so does its future. "I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific", wrote Lily Tomlin, and as Nigeria wants to "shift from dependence on oil to dependence on soil", she has to be more specific on how to achieve this, and this is where "Nigerian agriculture: the efficiency factor" comes in. 
Danladi Dada Kuta |
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