‘Seed is determining factor for high yield’
Access to finance is one of the major setbacks for the Nigerian farmers. The few farmers that were able to access agricultural loans are complaining of high interest rate. How can that problem be addressed?Finance is indeed a major problem of agriculture. We should understand that commercial banks cannot be able to finance agriculture because […]
Access to finance is one of the major setbacks for the Nigerian farmers. The few farmers that were able to access agricultural loans are complaining of high interest rate. How can that problem be addressed?
Finance is indeed a major problem of agriculture. We should understand that commercial banks cannot be able to finance agriculture because no bank can give any farmer any loan with a moratorium of five years. For a loan to benefit any farmer, that farmer requires a moratorium of at least five years. The tree crop that you can plant and get yield within a short time is banana because other tree crops like orange, mango, rubber, oil palm require at least five years to be ripe for harvest. To the credit of this administration, the Western German government donated $100 million to Nigeria to finance long term agriculture. The Nigerian Sovereign Wealth Fund put in another $20 million. The fund is domiciled in the Ministry of Agriculture and people have started accessing the money. We need people who are directly into agriculture to make contribution to this fund so that there can be sufficient money to reach out to the farmers. Government should also educate the farmers on the availability of this fund and how the rural farmers can access it. You know Nigeria has only one Bank of Agriculture and the capital is too low. So, when they are giving out loans, they do not always have enough funds to go round the farmers. So, the Bank of Agriculture is only a development bank.
The unfortunate thing is the idea government is nursing for the merger of the development banks to become one. That is to say that the Urban Development Bank, Agricultural Development Bank, the Federal Mortgage Bank will all be merged into one. That will be disastrous for Nigeria. A development bank is a bank that gives out loan with low interest. If you want to establish a real estate you go to Federal Mortgage Bank, access the loan just as you will go to the agricultural bank if you want to establish an oil palm plantation. When you say you will merge them together then agriculture will suffer. No commercial bank will give any farmer loan with good consideration.
NIRSEL has been there and is also supposed to make some funds available to farmers. Has it been there for them?
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has a very nice programme for financing agriculture through NIRSEL but the programme is collapsing. It was the Jonathan’s administration under the former CBN Governor and now His Royal Highness, the Emir of Kano Malam Muhammadu Sanusi 11 that floated NIRSEL. The programme is now comatose. That was a programme that started with a lot of incentives for the farmers. Take the Kano example; under the NIRSEL programme, a market for the export of tomatoes was established. It has reached over 75 percent completion but it is now dead. All the NIRSEL programmes are nowhere to be found.
If the issue of agricultural financing is to succeed, the new legislature should come up with a law that will compel the commercial banks to loan money to farmers at a very low interest rate as part of their own corporate social responsibility because if we fail to finance agriculture, we will be forced to spend to address hunger and its vices. Also, the fund for agriculture domiciled in the Ministry of Agriculture that was initiated by the Germans should be enlarged. The new administration should review the NIRSEL programme with the CBN coming up with a realistic programme of financing agriculture. The only way of addressing the menace of unemployment in the society is through the financing of agriculture because it is the fastest means of addressing poverty. Despite the poor seed quality we have that can easily be addressed; Nigeria still has a lot of agricultural produce it can export.
Has your house committee on agriculture ever taken its time to find out the cause of NIRSEL’s failure?
Throughout the past four years we have not done that and so we cannot say what exactly was responsible for the failure of NIRSEL. But I know it provided very nice incentives for the Nigerian farmers. Under NIRSEL, each state was given about N100 million or so to loan to farmers. It was the CBN that gave the states the money. The arrangement was for the CBN to deduct the money from the states allocations of the federation grant. The states were to distribute the money on loan to the farmers at very low interest rate. The money was actually distributed to the farmers. Since the first batch of beneficiaries got the money that was all.
Your committee has traveled far and wide including to places where rice farmers for example harvest 10 or more tones from a hectare as against the less than three tones the Nigerian farmer is getting from a hectare. Have you ever contemplated doing anything to help the situation?
You are still going back to the issue of seeds. I am sure if you ask the present minister of agriculture to list out some of his achievements in office he will mention seeds. He will say the seed council has produced people that are providing seeds to the Nigerian farmers. Seed is one of the major components of or determining factor of high yield. If government can provide high quality seeds to the Nigerian farmers provide the needed inputs and mechanise the agricultural system, our yield will surely appreciate. Not just rice as you mentioned, there are countries you will go to and when you see the high yield they are getting in maize you will start wondering.
Nigerian seed is called OP (Open pollinated) in which about 10 grammes will be sold at less than N500. But the five grammes of highly improved seeds will cost about N5,000. If our agriculture must succeed, Nigeria should pay more emphasis on seeds and that is where our research institutes have a central role to play because they are the only ones that can develop hybrid seeds for us. Agricultural research is a federal government mandate and when a research is conducted, the result of that research must be made available to every stakeholder. If farmers suspect that the seeds provided to them are mere grains, they should petition the Senate or House of Representatives.
As a farmer, I know that some of the seeds being distributed to farmers are mere grains but nobody complained. Most of the seed providers do not have farms and have no out growers that multiply the seeds for them. The research institutes will provide foundation seeds in small quantity to the seed companies which are expected to multiply the seeds in their farms or through their out growers.
In most cases they go to market and buy grains and distribute to the unsuspecting farmers. When a farmer plants what you say is improved seed and he discovered that it has the same yield with the grains he has been planting all these years, he will never believe any government official again. Even if you come with improved seeds tomorrow, he may likely reject it.