Cost of Living: Nigeria needs transformative beef value chain – Dr Junaidu Maina

In this interview, Dr Junaidu Maina, a seasoned livestock expert and the chairman of Danwaire Consulting Ltd, discussed the rising cost of beef in the country.   Why do you think beef has become very expensive for a typical Nigerian household? Let me start by saying that marketing has been characterised by inefficiency, informality and […]

In this interview, Dr Junaidu Maina, a seasoned livestock expert and the chairman of Danwaire Consulting Ltd, discussed the rising cost of beef in the country.

 

Why do you think beef has become very expensive for a typical Nigerian household?

Let me start by saying that marketing has been characterised by inefficiency, informality and lack of structure. This has always resulted in economic losses, food safety concerns and limited value addition. The sector is dominated by three sources: small-scale producers, trans-humans, people who come from outside. You know, they don’t travel with travellers’ checks – they move with their animals. Those are the main sources. 

In fact, the estimate we have states that about 50 per cent of the animals slaughtered here are actually from neighbouring countries. So, if you look at that, it raises issues in terms of exchange and the rest of them. But let me go back to the basics.

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One characteristic of livestock that most people don’t know is that it is inflation-safe, or it adjusts itself for inflation. To illustrate this, I will tell you a short story quickly.

There’s this story about people with a pastoral background in the urban area who went home and were discussing with their uncle about how the naira had been devalued and it created a lot of problems for them. He said that as far as he was concerned, he hadn’t seen any change because since he was a small boy, if you wanted to go to Mecca, you would sell four bulls; and the situation has not changed. 

A lot of people don’t realise that people invest a lot of money from inheritance in livestock because it continues to appreciate. That is the quality of animals – it adjusts itself. So, small producers only sell their animals if they have a reason. In fact, the usual story is that cattle are supposed to be a savings account; the small ruminants are the current account. That’s how they use it.

Because small producers mostly do not see their herds as a source of meat, they only sell animals when they have need. Those are the ones that come into the market. The second source is the trans-humans – the people moving around the moisture gradient from neighbouring countries. They will come here, and at the beginning of the rains, go back. And as you know, insecurity and some of the issues relating to open grazing have made it very difficult for people to move in here. That has considerably affected supply.

The major source of the slaughter is what they call trade animals. And currently, about 60 per cent are from neighbouring countries. Those are the three sources.

What I am trying to explain to you is that if you buy an animal from the market, it usually doesn’t go to slaughter. There is an incremental weight that people put up. Usually, he buys an animal of about 250kilos and keeps it for 90 or 100 days to raise it up to about 350kg. It is that increment that really takes care of most of the requirements. This is because if you slaughter it at the weight of 250kilos, the amount of meat available will not be as good. So, that incremental issue has become very critical. Now, the amount of feed you give it for the 90 to 100 days to make an additional incremental weight will push its cost from about N60,000 per tonne to N350,000.

This is one major challenge. And you can add all the issues of transportation, multiple taxation, availability and so many other things to it. You will also add exchange rate because the neighbouring countries bring the animals in CFA; and our naira has been devalued. In economics, you say that if you devalue a currency, it means your local production will compete with the external, but in this case, it is the reverse.

These are some of the issues that have made meat very expensive.

 

We now have a Ministry of Livestock Development in place. Based on some of these figures, indices or challenges, what should be done?

Well, we now have a good opportunity because a ministry has been created for livestock; and luckily, we have a minister who seems to have a clear understanding of this. So, essentially, we need to create what they call a transformative beef value chain. And we have examples, a template we can work on. Let me explain. When you grew up you thought maize was a staple. Tuwo masara was introduced in the 1960s.

Maize was introduced to take care of population growth and food supply; and now, it has become a staple food. This is what they call hybrid maize, which is different from the local maize because it has the function of fertiliser. And of course, it has big yields. It also brought the second stage of transformation in the poultry sector. We were only using family poultry, but today, the commercial poultry is the in-thing. If you go to every urban area, commercial poultry is there.

Commercial poultry is strongly supported by maize. This is a template we can use to carry out a similar transformation for our beef.

But we need to accept the issue of crossbreeds and hybrids as we did with maize. We didn’t use our local maize. When we came to poultry, we didn’t take our local chicken and put in a battery cage. We were dealing with special breeds. Now, we have this major challenge of maize production, not even sufficient to support the commercial poultry. So, if we are going into beef, there is going to be a bigger challenge this time around because if you put some of these animals in the feedlots, you have to prepare a special ration for them, just like we do for poultry. So, the demand for that will continue.

This is the way to go about it. The other important thing is to make sure you have a good supply of one-day-old chicks as we do with poultry. This is what we need to adopt.

 

Do you think the breeds we currently have in the country can meet our local demand?

Unfortunately, our indigenous breeds have very low productivity, both in terms of milk, weight gains etc. But they compensate for that with their ability to survive in very harsh conditions.

This is something we need to focus on. But let me take you back to the poultry example. Today, in virtually every major city, we have commercial poultry, and at the same time, our rural poultry is also functional.

In fact, some family poultries are made of a combination of special breeds that are commercial and half-local. You see, the issue of livestock has become an all-commerce game. Everybody is coming to say that ranching is a thing to do so that we would stop this movement and the rest of them, but I think it is a clear misunderstanding. There’s a place for everybody.

Ranching succeeded in East Africa and South Africa because of the colonial history. If you had the opportunity to go to South Africa and Botswana, you would see the level of fencing. Most of you don’t know that Botswana has about 10,000 kilometers of fence; that is why ranching was able to take hold. But that is not to say we cannot do the same thing. If you look at sub-Sahara Africa, ranching constitutes only about 20 per cent of our livestock. We can adopt the poultry model I described. We started with the importation of day-old chicks and from there, we started producing them locally.

Since we are able to establish commercial poultries all over, we need to adopt a similar thing for cattle. What we need is to have a foundation stock and we can have well established ranches for cow-calf production.

The point I am making is that we need institutional support in terms of finance, proper marketing and grading as we do for our poultry. This is what is now called the beef value chain. I am happy with the agreement we have with Brazilians.

 

Does the way the Nigerian beef market is set up contribute to its rising price?

This is something we really need to look at. Currently, we don’t have sufficient data to really support that transformation. Our markets are only places for casual transactions. We need to structure the market. We have to bring in infrastructure to support animals while they are there – to support animal health and welfare and ensure that the producer gets a fair price for his animals.

We also need to cut down on transportation cost. There’s more to beef than just the meat because it actually involves a lot of secondary activities – transportation, the slaughter and the rest. There is a lot of inefficiency in the market that really needs to be handled. 

 

Do you think we can still make progress if the fodder problem is not addressed systematically? 

We have to address it because currently, pastoralist animals are relatively cheap because they live on available grass and crop residues. If you want to finish an animal, you have to use concentrated, rationed feeds.

I told you that the prices are really going. Now, we have this major challenge of maize, which is the main feed. You see, in Europe and globally, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 30 per cent of the total crops produced all over the world is for animal feed. So we need to produce the feed. Here, if you look at maize, 85 per cent of the biomass is useless to human beings, but this is what they use as feed. We really have to go into massive feed production.

I believe that the moment we commercialise this value chain and addition and there’s enough money, people will go for that.