We’re determined to create wealth through agriculture—Adesina

Is Nigeria ripe for genetically modified technology? Does it have anything to do with food security? Do we the have legal framework or a bio-safety regime? For every country in the world, as population rises, nations face challenges in terms of feeding their people. First and foremost you have urbanisation, so the amount of arable land […]

Is Nigeria ripe for genetically modified technology? Does it have anything to do with food security? Do we the have legal framework or a bio-safety regime?
 For every country in the world, as population rises, nations face challenges in terms of feeding their people. First and foremost you have urbanisation, so the amount of arable land for cultivation will go down because of population pressure. The second is the fact that because of environmental issues you can no longer expand cultivated areas, so it means you have to intensify agriculture, which means you get more yield per unit area of land. So without doing that you cannot feed either Nigeria or the world. And so we have to apply science and we have to apply technology.
I think there is a big misconception, and that misconception is confusing everything that is science with GM. That is very wrong. Let me give you clear examples of that; first, biotechnology is very different from GMOs. Biotechnology that we are using for example today in Nigeria includes tissue culture.
What’s the update on the bio-safety bill currently before the National Assembly?
The bio-safety bill is back to the National Assembly to be looked at, I think it has passed the period in which it is supposed to have been passed into law so I understand its made its way back to the National Assembly. I really believe we should fast-track the approval of the bio-safety bill because it helps to regulate how certain types of technologies are used; we’re mindful of the environment, consumer safety, bio-safety, bio-diversity, they are crucial things that you must actually be aware of so that you can also do the proper risk assessment. You can’t work in the blind, so you need regulations for many of these things. We’re in a modern worlds we are not an ,island, but then you got to be able to manage this in a responsible way. I am a big advocate for it to be passed quickly.
Are you aware of some misconceptions surrounding the issue of GMOs with regard to environmental issues, issues of religion and whether there is a sinister plot somewhere to depopulate Nigeria through GMOs?
Well, I don’t believe in conspiratorial theories. Every nation must feed itself, every nation must make the right decision for what’s best for it, and those decisions cannot be made by others for them. Nigerians are very smart people, a very educated people, so nobody anywhere whether Europe or anywhere can tell Nigerians what technologies to use to feed them. We make those decisions but we are responsible enough to have in place good science, good regulations, and good risk assessment to determine what to do.
Take mobile phones for example; somebody can easily tell you that mobile phone causes cancer in the brain, people were writing all over the place, have they stopped using mobile phones because of that? Everything in life, you can decide you want to go to Europe or America by donkey because it is more friendly, it doesn’t have carbon emissions, at least not so much, or you choose a plane to go there, when you take that plane its a risk, so its always managing what the benefits and risks are. You can never say Im not using modern technology, then you ‘ll be in the stone age, when people want to look for how people used to be classified in time then they will point to us. No, we are not going to be that type.
Government brought the idea of supplying phones to farmers, what is the update on that initiative, and how does that impact on the farmer’s productive capacity?
Well, first and foremost let me say when it comes to the issue of mobile phones, the issue is not the phones, the issue is the system we’re developing, and why? When I was appointed minister I found in this country what was the most corrupt fertilizer sector you would find anywhere. The government was spending hundreds of billions of naira on fertilizers, they were not getting to farmers. Between 1980 and 2010 we spent roughly N873 billion on fertilizer subsidies, and not more than 10 per cent of it got to the farmers. So which means about N776 billion laterally developed hands and legs and walked away.
Now when you talk about right to food, you cannot secure right to food if you are not producing food. Majority of the people that need the right to food, that need access to affordability of food are in the rural areas. The fundamental thing you need is guarantee them access to seeds and fertilizers and other farm inputs. If they are not getting that all you are doing is breeding a poverty industry. And I said no, this is a very corrupt system.
So what we found was a sector that was actually not supporting farmers, and when we took the government out of that, the next thing is I must be able to reach those farmers directly and cut away all the middle men making money for decades at the expense of farmers. That was why we moved to the most powerful tool for doing that, which is mobile phone. With your mobile phone I know you.
We launched the nation’s first ever registration of our farmers, in fact I must say, we started last year, and we’ve already registered 10 million farmers. And not just register farmers, we know who they are, where they are, what their needs are; we also have these farmers carrying cards, they have identity cards, so we know who they are.
So much is being spent on rice importation, when are we going to see an end to that?
I don’t believe there is dignity in depending on others for your food, because the same land they have, the same farmers they have, the same sunshine they have, God gave us too, so why are they able to use theirs to produce food to export to us, and why are we importing from them? The more you import from others, your national security is at stake, your farmers are not getting money because the farmers in other countries are benefitting, you are not using your population to eat the food you are producing locally, you are using your population to eat the food of other countries. You are growing their economies while destroying your own; you are exporting jobs to them while your own people are walking on the streets. That is what this government is doing. I can’t expect that we will fix the problem of 50 years in 24 hours.