‘We can reach farmers with agro-inputs anywhere’

Meet Appolo Goma, the acting Group Chief Operating Officer, Notore Chemical Industries Ltd. He has an extensive knowledge of the Nigerian business landscape. The agricultural economist, in this interview, looks at the current challenges of getting farm inputs to farmers in Nigeria and suggest the way forward. Excerpts: What are the current challenges of getting […]

Meet Appolo Goma, the acting Group Chief Operating Officer, Notore Chemical Industries Ltd. He has an extensive knowledge of the Nigerian business landscape. The agricultural economist, in this interview, looks at the current challenges of getting farm inputs to farmers in Nigeria and suggest the way forward. Excerpts:

What are the current challenges of getting agro inputs to farmers across the country?
The major challenge is infrastructural decay in Nigeria. Agricultural inputs, particularly fertiliser, are usually moved en masse and so the mode of transportation you find in most countries is the rail. Unfortunately the rail system in Nigeria is in very bad state until recently when we started rehabilitating just a few rail lines. Also, roads are bad 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 costs elements in transportation, they are huge. So if you combine 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 these problems. The private sector and government have roles to play. I think the government has to intensify effort in rehabilitation of the railways. They have to ensure that organisations 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. Though the Port Harcourt network to the North is about to get functional, there is no link to the plant here. So if you have to move these inputs, you have to do a lot of double handling. The government has to focus on building of rural roads linking markets and major service points within the country. Government needs to insist that the people it partners with (agro input distributors) build structures for distribution. As an organisation, 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, we 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. Our distribution is not restricted 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. We have also created structures that enable us to distribute in areas where people were unable to get products, areas termed no-go areas because of the terrain, poor roads and hilly, like Sardauna, Gembu in Taraba, and Kaura Namoda. Only our company 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, they appear from nowhere with their structures. We have groups of people all over the country working with rural farmers and dealers, helping in agricultural inputs distribution. What government needs to do is to ensure that any person that wants to key into any government programme has a structure on the ground, prior to the programme, and not jump 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?
We have close to 80 dealers scattered all over the country. We created a structure that enables 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 created a structure that we called village promoter networks. The promoters are working in the rural areas helping farmers with the best practice. We trained them on the best practices of farming, using demonstration plots. They also go to the dealers to carry inputs and deliver to the rural areas. So in couple of locations we have dealers who serve as village promoters. Some of them have grown into what we call super village promoters and they have tricycles (Keke NAPEP). They go to the hinterland to ensure that fertiliser gets to the place where farmers are.
I’m aware that Notore has been working on ensuring that improved quality seeds are available to Nigerian farmers. Have far have you gone in that direction?
We recognised that it is impossible to improve agriculture without quality seeds. So what we have is to set up a seed company. We started the seed business and introduced Notore seed into the market three years ago and it was well accepted. We’re in the process of restructuring our operation and I’m sure, soon, farmers will have Notore seeds.
What plans do you have to improve on the current distribution network?
We’re not comfortable where we are, though we believe that we have the best distribution structure in the agricultural sector in Nigeria. We believe that the only way we can remain in business is to improve. So we are working to improve and reduce cost of distribution. I think in the next one or two weeks, officials of the railway corporation will visit our plant. We are discussing with them to see how  we can start using the railway. I heard the Port Harcourt to Kano line is getting set to be operational. We can use that network to improve process of distribution to the hinterland. We also had discussion with inland waterway people on the possibility of moving fertiliser en masse to the shore at Lokoja, from Port Harcourt. So we are looking at various possibilities to improve our distribution of agricultural inputs.