Miva rice generates over N9bn income annually — Aondokaa

How has it been as a rice farmer?It has been nice and challenging. Nice in the sense that when you see the farmers, when you arrogate people into farm clusters and they are happy by creating wealth for themselves, then, you are happy. And the challenging means when some of the necessary inputs to make […]

How has it been as a rice farmer?
It has been nice and challenging. Nice in the sense that when you see the farmers, when you arrogate people into farm clusters and they are happy by creating wealth for themselves, then, you are happy. And the challenging means when some of the necessary inputs to make them grow bigger are not there.
What are these challenges you are talking about?
The major challenges are the inputs to support agriculture, especially as some of the things that ought to have been done by the three tiers of government are not done. At the local government level, if they were excellent agricultural policy, it would have been wonderful. But, since the local government cannot do feeder roads which are supposed to be their responsibility in order to create access for easy evacuation of farm produce and movement of the tractors to the farms, it is quite challenging. Sometimes, you have very good Fadama farms to cultivate but the bridges are not there and getting in or out of the farms becomes very difficult, because vehicles often get stopped at some points only for one to start looking for motorcycle to evacuate the farm produce from that point.
How has the federal government policy benefited the big rice farmers like you?
The policy has been quite beneficial. I’m not talking of politics at this point, but about agriculture. The agricultural transformation seems to be working, because they have carried all the relevant stakeholders in the agric sector into consideration in formulating the policy. In the rice sector, I’m the secretary of the rice processers association so I can tell you that there cannot be a complete rice value chain because paddy alone is not government need, it is when you process it that it becomes rice. The processer adds value by processing, packaging and marketing it. So the support we have received from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, especially the minister of agriculture in local rice processing is tremendous. When we came in to the business in 2011 he encouraged us because there were only four rice mills in the country then located in Umza in Kano, Aboni Agro in Ebonyi State, Miva rice owned by Mikap Nigeria limited and Ashi rice in Benue State. But, the support we have received from the minister of agriculture especially now that we are close to 24 local rice millers in the country is overwhelming. And recently, the big time rice players are also coming in. For instance, the Dangote Group, Bua, Honeywell, Elephant Group have indicated interest and we in the local rice processing industry are happy because the moment these big time players invest in local rice production, we believe that we can also get the protection that will stabilise the prices of local rice. Much more, we believe that with the huge investment coming from this type of groups, we hope in the near future of not more than two or three years from now, rice importation will become a thing of the past, because what we are doing now is to produce rice that is competitive. Right inside my mill now what you see is of higher quality compared to what is brought from abroad. We hope that when the Bua, Dangote Group, Honeywell, Coscharis, Elephant and others come together, the smaller millers will be protected by the bigger ones and then the prices will be stabilised, quality will be stabilised and if you are a smaller miller, all you have to do is to corner a market and market your rice like they do in India. In fact, when the US ambassador visited our rice company in April 2014, he was surprised to see that our rice is of the highest quality.
How much sales do you make now?
Mathematically, we produce 8.5 tonnes per hour. We have two lines, the first line is 2.5 tonnes and the second line is 6 tonnes. We are hoping that our supplies will continue to increase because our consumption of imported rice is amounting to $1.4 billion dollars yearly.
The issue of power supply is worrisome in the country, how are you coping with the situation?
We are running on the national grid and generator. We spend a lot in this area because for the machines to be running we need to have 250 KVA generator switch on and we have also synchronised them to be consistently on. So when all the machines are working, in less than three weeks, 33,000 litres of diesel are consumed.
Do you do have a research unit in Mikap as do big rice farmers overseas?
Yes. We have a research unit and it is one of the best. We train local farmers and the aim is to establish farm clusters. We have 225 farm clusters as cooperative groups. The farmers are in groups, they don’t have large farms. We are training them to have better production output from their farms. We have a strong research group of some professors who are agronomists, agriculture researchers engaged by USAID and we as trainers in this scheme. Of course, we met BNARDA which has a reservoir of expertise in that area, so we engaged them as facilitators. It is a big cost on my side, but what can I do? The happy thing is that the federal government’s incentive that comes to us is the one alleviating the huge investment that we are putting in the training.
The National Assembly has just passed the Biotech Bill. Do you think that would benefit the rice farmers?
The whole aim of biotech is to increase the farmers output. When we started, the farmers output was low that at the end of the harvest they get 1.5 tonnes per hectare which is less than 30 bags of paddy or 15 bags of 100 kilogrammes. Now we have raised the output to between 4 to 5 tonnes and one hectare is now giving a farmer 40 to 50 bags. Though the farmers outside this country make about 14 tonnes per hectare through the genetic modification, however in those places land is an issue. For instance, in India, there is a law that one cannot even own land that is more than two hectares so the people concern in such places is how they can increase the yield. Our target in this training programme is to make sure that the farmers maximise their output. For now, what we are doing is to give improved seedlings and we get these things directly from the seed council. Every season the minister sends some seeds that we distribute to these farmers free. We are putting pressure on the US government not to stop the funding of the programme due to the positive impact. My target is to take it to Taraba, Nasarawa and states where my factories are located, including the entire Benue, because whatever they produce cannot be enough. USAID gives 70 percent of the funding while Mikap supplies the remaining 30 percent and our facilitators are BNARDA and other experts.
Given the federal government’s favourable agricultural policy which you said is expected to end importation of rice in the next three years, where do you see MIVA then?
MIVA will be at the forefront. Our target is to motivate the farmers. It is a complete value chain to create jobs for millions of people if we continue to do it well. The local rice will become a priority. It is the local rice that has stabilised the market and it is the small local miller that stabilises the shortage of rice supply. So you could see even rice millers who do not have enough are the major contributors to the market and without them the gap would have been so wide and maybe we would have been importing like $2 billion dollar worth of rice into the country. But we have come with integrated stone free rice for the elites, and prospectors of the likes of Dangote have brought in money for the integrated rice. Nigerians will have the appetite to patronise the locally made goods, not only rice, because the economy is getting weak and the common man has to cut his coat according to his size so as to save and do something useful.
What is the major hindrance to local rice production?      
The issue of power is part of the hindrance but part of the problem has been solved by the federal government and that is funding. Now if you borrow you will start making money because you have a moratorium for three years. This government has transformed the sector into agric business, and for me who comes from the northern part of the country, we don’t have oil so what we can do is to go into agribusiness. The federal government has turned agriculture into a business venture and we are trying to see how we can introduce irrigation farming because it can give better yield.