AGRIC NOTORE
AGRIC NOTORE ‘We have structures to reach farmers with agro-inputs anywhere’ Meet Appolo Goma, the AG Group Chief Operating Officer, Notore Chemical Industries Ltd. He has a very extensive corporate cognate background in the Nigerian business landscape. The agricultural economist in this interview takes a look at the current challenges of getting farm inputs to […]
AGRIC NOTORE
‘We have structures to reach farmers with agro-inputs anywhere’
Meet Appolo Goma, the AG Group Chief Operating Officer, Notore Chemical Industries Ltd. He has a very extensive corporate cognate background in the Nigerian business landscape. The agricultural economist in this interview takes a look at the current challenges of getting farm inputs to farmers in Nigeria and looks at the way forward. Excerpts:
By Vincent A. Yusuf
What are the current challenges of getting agro inputs to the farm gates across the country?
The major challenge is actually in the infrastructural decay you find generally in Nigeria. Agricultural inputs, particularly fertiliser are usually moved en mass and so the normal mode of transportation you find in most countries is actually through the rail. Unfortunately the rail system in Nigeria is in very bad state until recently when we started rehabilitating just a few rail lines, the rail infrastructure in Nigeria is actually none existent. Coupled with that is that most of the rural roads are not accessible. The roads are not accessible in most parts of where you have farmlands. While the major farmers are in the hinterlands, the networks to those areas are very bad. The third part is that even for people that want to engage in transporting business, if you look at the cost of acquiring trucks and the cost of fuel and other cost elements in transportation, it is actually very huge. So if you combine all these factors, you will find out why it is very difficult to get those inputs to hinterlands.
How can government tackle these challenges?
First of all, there needs to be a holistic approach in battling this problem. The private sector has a role to play and government also has a role to play. I think the government has to intensify effort in the rehabilitation of the railways. They need to do it massively not just building just one rail network. They have to ensure that organizations like us dispatching hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fertiliser to different parts of the country are linked to the rail networks. As it is now, we don’t have any link. Even the Port Harcourt network to the north is actually about to get functional, but there is no link to the plant here. So if you have to move these inputs, you actually have to do a lot of double handling. The government also has to focus on building of rural roads linking markets and major service points within the country. And also government needs to insist that the people they partner with (agro input distributors) to actually spend time to build structures for distribution. As an organisation, from the foundation, we’ve actually done that trying to build a structure that is targeted at meeting the needs of the populace. So rather than build a structure that gears towards urban distribution like others do, what we did was to look at where our customers are. We know that the farmers are in the rural areas, so we build a structure that can deliver fertiliser to any village in Nigeria as far as the road leads to that area. So our distribution is not majorly to the urban cities. You can have a situation where a dealer, for instance, located in Kano can buy 50 trucks of fertiliser but out of that 50 trucks, only about 5 trucks might be going to his warehouse in Kano, the rest can be going to 40 different locations all over Kano where you have customers that have been able to raise order for at least a truck. So we have done that one in order to intensify our distribution into the hinterland. We have also created structures that enable us to distribute down into areas where people were unable to get products, areas termed no-go areas because of the terrain, poor roads, hilly areas, etc; Areas like Saudona, Gembu in Taraba, and Kaura Namoda. We recognized that we are the only one in the agricultural sector that actually has that distribution network. Many others have distribution structures within township and then anytime there is a government programme that wants to focus on input, you just see different briefcase companies appear from nowhere with those structures. We have groups of people all over the country working with rural farmers and dealers helping agricultural inputs distribution. What government needs to do is to ensure that any person that wants to key into any government programme actually has a structure prior to the programme and not the one that jumps out of the nowhere because there is a programme that they can benefit from.
What is Notore doing to expand farmers’ accessibility to fertiliser across country?
Just like I told you, we actually set up a structure that ensures we have dealers all over the country. At the moment we have close to 80 dealers scattered all over the country. What we try to do unlike the standard distribution structure where you ship to dealers or get dealers to come to Port Harcourt to pick products, we created a structure that enable dealers to place order for the fertiliser and we can deliver it to the locations they want. In addition to that because we have groups of agricultural experts working all over the rural areas, we actually created a structure that we called ‘village promoter networks.’ The promoters are working in the rural areas helping farmers with the best practice. Because we trained them on the best practices of farming using demonstration plots, and what they also do is to go to the dealers to carry inputs and using tricycles to deliver it down to the rural areas. So in couple of locations we have dealers as some of these village promoters. Some of them have grown into what we call ‘super village promoters’ that have tricycles (Keke NAPEP)that move from dealers’ locations deep into the hinterland to ensure that fertiliser gets to the place where farmers are, appropriately.
I’m aware that Notore has been working on ensuring that improved quality seeds are available to Nigerian farmers. What are you doing in that direction?
We recognize from the setup of our business that it is impossible for you to improve agriculture without quality seeds. So what we have done from the foundation of the business is also to set up a seed company. It got incorporated couple of years ago. We actually started the seed business and introduced Notore seed into the market three years ago and it was well accepted. We’re still in the process of building that seed company but because of one or two issues, we are in the process of restructuring that whole operation and I’m sure very soon the farmers will have Notore seeds.
What plans do you have to improve on the current distribution network or are you comfortable with where you are at the moment?
No, we’re not comfortable where we are. Every time as a business what we seek is improvement, even though we believe we have the best distribution structure in the agricultural sector in Nigeria. We don’t believe in the fact that we are comfortable where we are. We believe that the only way we can remain in business is to improve. So we are working tirelessly every time to try and see how we can improve on- particularly dropping the cost of distribution. We had some engagements and I think in the next one or two weeks, officials of the railway corporation are supposed to visit our plant. We are in the process of discussing with them to see how even the way the railway is today, we can start using them. I heard the PortHarcourt to Kano line is already getting set to be operational; we can access that network to actually improve the speed of distribution to the hinterland. We also had discussion with inland waterway people on the possibility of moving fertiliser en mass to the shore at Lokoja from Port Harcourt. So we are looking at various possibilities to improve our distribution of agricultural inputs.