‘We have identified Faro 61 as high yielding rice seed’

Can you give us a brief description of your farm, please?In terms of rice cultivation, I farm on 80 to 100 hectares of farmland. That is for rice cultivation alone and it is an all-year-round activity. I have my farmland at Goronyo irrigation site here in Sokoto State. Rice farmers in Bakalori, Zamfara State and […]

Can you give us a brief description of your farm, please?
In terms of rice cultivation, I farm on 80 to 100 hectares of farmland. That is for rice cultivation alone and it is an all-year-round activity. I have my farmland at Goronyo irrigation site here in Sokoto State.
Rice farmers in Bakalori, Zamfara State and some parts of Kebbi State have commenced triple harvest of rice in a year. How is it here?
In Goronyo, some of us have even gone beyond that as we harvest rice between six and eight times in one year because of the type of seed, the fertile land and adequate water that we have. When we realised that the rice seed the federal government is distributing to farmers through the GES arrangement has very low yield, we decided to go to the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR) in Zaria to buy hybrid rice seed called Faro 61. When you plant Faro 61 and apply adequate fertilizer at the appropriate time with adequate water supply, it will be ready for harvest within 90 days. At harvest, you only need to cut the panicle leaving the stem.
When you apply fertilizer and water to the rice plant, it germinates again. The interesting thing about it is anywhere you harvest one panicle of rice, about three or more new ones will come up. Since you did not plant it fresh, it takes only 30 days instead of 90 to harvest. And any farmland you harvest 20 tonnes the first time; you will be expected to harvest about 50 tonnes at the second harvest which is just 30 days away. After the second harvest, you will again apply fertilizer and water and wait for another 30 days for another bigger harvest where you will get far more than what you got the second time. Since every panicle of rice you harvested, three or more new ones will germinate, the more you harvest the more the yield. The farmer is expected to clear the farm and plant new set of seed once in a year after over five harvests.
The harvest going on in my farm right now is the fourth harvest and next month we shall harvest the same plant for the fifth time. So, it is only the first time that you plant this seed that you will wait for 90 days before harvesting. All other subsequent harvestswill be after every 30 days. You can get five to six tonnes per hectare after harvest. But we are buying the seed from the research institute with our money.
Now that you have found the seed of your choice, how about fertilizer; where and how do you get enough for your farms?
Fertilizer is a nationwide problem bedeviling farmers wherever you go to in this country. Farmers that registered with GES are getting three bags of fertilizer through the joint federal and state governments’ subsidy arrangement. Sokoto State government is also assisting farmers with subsidised fertilizer under a separate arrangement; but all that is not enough. Most of our farmers do not have enough money to buy fertilizer for their farms.
Even the two or three bags they are selling through the GES, some farmers are not able to redeem their allocations because they do not have the money to pay for it; instead, they sell their allocation to others that have the means to redeem and collect. At the moment we are talking with some fertilizer dealers with a view to enter into agreement between the dealers and farmers so that they will be giving farmers fertilizer on loan to be paid after harvest.
The federal government recently released the Guaranteed Minimum Price (GMP) of some selected crops with rice put at N65,000 per metric tonne. Will that assist farmers?
Yes, it is a good thing because we have been agitating for that. As we are talking now, I am aware of over 50,000 farmers that have harvested their rice but could not sell because there are no good buyers. The price fixed by government is good. People are now buying a bag of rice as low as N5,000. The N6,500 fixed by government is good even though Kebbi State government started the programme of buying a bag of rice at N6,500 from farmers about two years ago.
Despite all these, how do you think local rice production will succeed so long as Nigeria continues to import rice?
Rice importation is the biggest obstacle militating against local production of the commodity. The consumers of the foreign, imported rice are also ignorant of the type of foreign rice they eat. Some of the foreign rice they import into this country is industrial waste, some are rotten and expired before they are brought in. I also want to appreciate the fact that we do not have standard rice milling machines that can process our rice in commercial quantity. Good processing and packaging of rice can also attract buyers. But when government finally bans rice importation, surely local production will be enhanced.
I know you have some cottage rice mills in the state, how do you thrash you rice?
It is still the old way; we are still doing it the way it was done 200 years ago. People, mainly women and children,use sticks to beat the rice on the ground until the rice is fully thrashed. Those that have advanced are the ones using locally fabricated machines to thrash it. With the rate at which rice production is increasing in this country, I expect our business men to invest by buying and installing standard thrashing, milling and other crop processing machines in this country. It is at the stage of thrashing that stones and other unwanted particles are introduced into the rice that gets to the cooking pot. I think there should be a forum where government, the business community and the farmers will meet to find means of getting these machines installed to boost our production.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the distribution of rice mills to state. Do you think that will address part of the problems of rice production in the country?
Those mills will not be adequate. The last I knew about the arrangement for the distribution of those mills, they were to allocate one to each Senatorial District of a state. That means some farmers would have to transport their produce for about a 100 kilometers to be able to access the mill. Who pays the transport and other inconveniences? There will be problem in fixing prices for rice because you cannot tell the farmer that conveyed his rice to a distance of about 80 kilometers to get it milled to sell it the same price with the man living next street to the mill. That mill may not be able to successfully mill the rice coming from even one local government like Goronyo at the rate we are producing.
It is a good starting, though, and we really appreciate government effort but we are still far from reaching where we ought to be. There is need for the private sector to come in and provide all the necessary machines we require in the agricultural sector. Unless standard commercial mills are adequately provided in all rice producing areas, government should not make the mistake of banning rice importation.
The Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) is responsible for monitoring and supervising the activities of all research institutes in the country, have you drawn their attention to the problems you are having with those seeds?
The council knows its job and mandate better than us; they also know that those seeds government is buying from contractors and distributing to farmers through the GES arrangement are mere grains that do not have any good yield, but what did they do if they are serious about their job? What has the ARCN done to ensure that only certified seeds are allowed to get to farmers, especially under the GES arrangement? If they cannot ensure that, what then is their duty? They all know that the contractors are only supplying grains in lieu of seeds and that is why any rice farmer using the seeds given to him through GES cannot harvest up to three tonnes of rice from a hectare.
The federal government, from the Presidency that gave the approval to the minister,is doing their best to ensure that the smallholder farmers benefit from the programme but the research council is not doing its job of monitoring and coordinating the activities of the research institutes. The council is supposed to advice government to properly fund the research institutes and patronise them by buying improved seeds from them because they are more reliable.
It beats one’s imagination that the unsuspecting federal government is buying and distributing grains to farmers in the name of seeds when IAR, a federal government research institute is there with very high yielding Faro 61 and the research institute at Badegi, Niger State, which is also a federal government institute can release high yielding Faro 44, yet the ARCN cannot advice the minister to source for such high yielding seeds from our research institutes instead of the grains being supplied by farmers.The council then is useless and valueless.
The research council is very much aware of the problems but it is looking the other way. It is either they are benefiting from the shoddy arrangement or they have their reason for not doing the right thing. Their inaction is actually harming the federal government’s good policies. The government actually meant well by introducing the GES programme, but some government officials through their inaction are frustrating government from achieving its aim.
The federal government policy on rice is to ensure that Nigeria produces enough for local consumption and even export. What must government do to achieve this target?
We are still far from that but it is something that can be achieved if the government decides to work along with farmers. First, there is the need to educate our banks to know the value of financing the smallholder farmer and address the issue of farmers’ access to hybrid seeds and adequate fertilizer.The private sector must also come in to establish processing industries and establish stable markets for farm produce. Among all these issues, the most pressing one is access to hybrid seeds. I have told you how I am using Faro 61 and the yield I am getting from it. You plant once and harvest at least five times with the least being six tonnes per hectare.
If government can provide Faro 61 and assist the farmers to access adequate fertilizer through the subsidy arrangement and our farmers start harvesting over six tonnes of rice from a hectare every month, which farmer will cry of poverty or which Nigerian will say he or she is hungry when there will be surplus food everywhere?
Government is spending a lot in running the research institutes, the research council and on buying the so-called seeds yet those sitting in the research council saying they are experts in this and that cannot advice the government appropriately. Statistics indicate that rice worth about N365 billion is being lawfully imported annually. That means we are importing rice worth N1 billion daily on the average. Why should it be so when we are yet to utilise up to 30 percent of our arable land.We have enough water for irrigation, we have enough healthy farmers and research institutes though some people are refusing to coordinate them appropriately?
 If the minister can address the problems associated with seeds and mobilise banks to give farmers loans to buy adequate fertilizer for their farms, the impact of the GES and federal government policy on agriculture will be clearly noticed.