Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, recently bagged the Forbes Award on his effort to ensure food security in Nigeria, adjudged Africa’s most populous nation. Adesina, who aims at revolutionising the agricultural sector, does not mince words in reiterating that a country that does not have food security suffers adversely from human rights violations. As part of activities to mark the International Human Rights Day a moment ago, members of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), including ADAMU ABUH, had an interactive session with the Minister in Abuja.
ON whether Nigeria is ripe for genetically-modified (GM) technology.
For every country in the world, as population rises, nations face challenges in terms of feeding their people. First and foremost, you have urbanization; 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.
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.
Tissue is what you use to actually grow a lot more of your bananas so that the bananas that you have, instead of planting suckers, you actually just plant the plant legs that come out of tissue culture. The advantage of that is that you don’t plant suckers; when you plant suckers year after year, you have weevils and nematodes.
With tissue culture, you can get up to 30, 40 tons per hectare and it’s not genetically modification, it’s just science; it’s called tissue culture.
Take the case we are working on in Nigeria today with the issue of nutrition; access to vitamin A is very crucial. If you don’t have vitamin A, it causes blindness for children. So, to rapidly expand that, the National Root Crops Research Institute, developed with the support, of course, of the IITA in Ibadan and the Global Alliance for Improving Nutrition what is called the pro-vitamin A cassava.
Now, the pro-vitamin A cassava allows you to get more vitamin A for children, and it’s not genetically modified but it’s biotechnology. You take a look also at orange-flesh, sweet potatoes; it has beta-carotene in it, and it’s a precursor for vitamin A. Again, it’s there for us to expand for our farmers.
Our target is to reach two million farmers within the next two years with both pro-vitamin A cassava and orange-flesh sweet potatoes. These are the advances that we are using.
I believe that the most important thing for us is not to make that conclusion. I am a scientist and I know the difference. However, for us, when it comes to the issue of how you use modern sciences, you have to have in place very good regulations. We have to have bio-safety rules, bio-safety laws and regulations in place; things that will protect bio-diversity.
It’s very important that you should be able to monitor what happens to the environment for any intervention, and most importantly for me, being able to make sure that consumers are aware of what they eat. The consumer has a right to know whatever it is. So, it’s all about protecting our food supply but we cannot be in the Stone Age; this is the Modern Age.
On the Bio-safety Bill 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’s supposed to be passed into law. I understand it 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 are 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 are not an island; we are in a modern world. 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.
On misconceptions surrounding the 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 is best for it, and others cannot make those decisions for them.
Nigerians are very smart people, a very educated people; so, nobody anywhere, whether in Europe or America can tell Nigerians what technologies to use to feed themselves. 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 phones cause cancer in the brain; people were writing all over the place, but have they stopped using mobile phones because of that?
You can decide you want to go to Europe or America by donkey because it is friendlier, it doesn’t have carbon emissions, at least not so much, or you choose a plane to go there. When you take that plane, it is a risk. Thus, it is always managing what the benefits and risks are.
You can never say I am not using modern technology; then you will be in the Stone Age. When people want to look for how people used to be classified in time, they will point to us. No, we are not going to be that type.
On the initiative to procure phones to farmers and other steps aimed at boosting farmers’ productive capacity
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 are 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, and they were not getting to the 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. Which means about N776 billion literally 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 to 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. To the credit of President Goodluck Jonathan, he put his 3,000 per cent support behind my call for a reform in that, and it took us exactly 90 days to clean up the corruption of 40 years.
We took the government totally out of the system. I don’t sign a fertilizer contract, I don’t sign a seed contract, and I will never sign one until my job is done because it is not the job of a minister to be doing that.
You go to the rural areas, you find Fanta, you find Pepsi, and you find Coca-cola; does the government buy them? Does the government distribute or sell them?
What we found was a sector that was actually not supporting farmers. And when we took the government out of that, the next thing was I must be able to reach those farmers directly and cut away all the middlemen making money for decades at the expense of the farmers.
That was why we moved to the most powerful tool for doing that, which is mobile phone. With your mobile phone, we launched the nation’s first ever registration of our farmers. We started last year, and this year, we’ve already registered 10 million farmers.
And it’s not just registering farmers, we also know who they are, where they are, and what their needs are. We also have these farmers carrying cards — identity cards; so, we know who they are.
Then, we decided to launch the electronic wallet; it allows us to send funds to our farmers for subsidies, for seeds and fertilizers directly on their phones and they can use that to go and buy seeds and fertilizers from agro dealers that are very close by to them. We started it last year (2012).
When you are building a house, you first build the foundation. We reached 1.5 million farmers last year (2012) when we started.
To give you an indication of the impact, in every average farm house is about five people; each of those farmers got two bags of fertilizer, and seeds we gave free of charge. That means we are impacting on about seven million people in terms of providing food security.
This year (2013), we reached five million farmers. So, we reached close to six to seven million farmers in two years via the phones, directly reaching them.
If you check even the lower figure, six million average family times five, that is 30 million people whose food security has improved because we bought seeds and fertilizers directly and we cut out corruption. It is accountable; it is transparent; it is impacting.
And by the way, Nigeria is the first country to develop an electronic wallet system for reaching farmers, not just in Africa, but in the world. Today, all African countries are coming here (Nigeria).
A few weeks ago, President Kikwete of Tanzania asked his people to come here and copy that model. Other countries are coming, too. Kenya, Ethiopia, India, Brazil and China are all coming here.
Think about it: a country that was derided as having one of the most corrupt fertilizer system is today exporting transparency! That is the scale of the transformation that I am talking about.
When it comes to the benefits of phones for farmers, I don’t know what people get so excited about on this issue. Via these phones, we are reaching millions of farmers on farm inputs; on the same phone, I will reach you with extension information.
To reach millions of farmers, you have to hire thousands of people as extension workers; where is the money going to come from? But I can send you information on where to plant, what to plant, when to harvest, and what the market price information is.
I can send so much information to a farmer today. We are in a modern world; we’ve left that world where people were using town criers to carry information around, and I am determined that Nigerian agriculture will be modernised.
ON when Nigeria would finally put an end to rice importation that has gulped billions of naira at the expense of the economy
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, and 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’re growing their economies while destroying your own; you’re exporting jobs to them while your people are walking on the streets.
That is what this government is doing to redress. I can’t expect that we will fix the problem of 50 years in 24 hours. There is no magic in it. It doesn’t matter how much faster you want to live in a skyscraper, you have to build the foundation for it, and that is exactly what we are doing.
Take the case of rice that you mentioned; does it make sense for a country to spend a trillion naira a day in importing rice when we have upland rice, lowland rice, fadama rice, mangrove rice, and irrigated rice?
You can grow rice all across this country. Nigeria should be exporting rice, and not importing rice. That is what President Jonathan decided we have to do.
Last year (2012), when we started, our first major effort was just after the flood. We said, okay, the flood waters are going back; let’s take advantage of the waters as they are receding, and begin to do flood recession agriculture — that means we take advantage of the flood waters.
So, we started the nation’s first-ever national policy on dry season cultivation of rice. We registered 267,000 farmers all by phone and we gave them seeds and fertilizers in 10 states in the North. These farmers we gave high-yielding varieties of rice never cultivated previously rice seeds called Faro 44 and Faro 52.
The farmers got yield four tons per hectare; that is, twice what you get in the rainy season. The reason is simple: in the rainy season, you have a lot of insects, you have a lot of cloud cover, and you are not able to do much.
They produce 1.1 million metric tons of paddy rice. It was a revolution unlocked in the North. It had never happened. And detractors (had) said, ‘Oh, we can’t do it because they don’t want us to do it.’ And we did it.
Just about two weeks ago (December), the farmers of Zamfara State, almost 200 of them, came to Abuja and gave me a plaque in appreciation of our modest gains in rice production. They said they came to say thank you because they had never seen anything like this before.
This year (2013), we are targeting a total of 400,000 farmers. I have my staff in the field for the past several weeks. We have registered 700,000 farmers, more than 400,000 we wanted to do. If we get four tons per hectare, we’ll get 2.8 million metric tons of rice paddy. Even if we get three tons, we’ll get 2.1 million metric tons of rice paddy. What does that tell you?
It tells you that Nigeria is producing more paddy rice today than we had ever done, and I have full confidence that Nigeria can become a rice exporter in three to five years. We have the land to do it; we just have to support our farmers.
Let’s just get one thing clear: Because some people want waivers to bring in rice, they go around and inform Nigerians that no, there is no paddy rice.
Of course, if you put a cat with milk, it will drink the milk; if you put a cat with fried fish, the job of the cat is to eat the fish. You can’t ask the cat that did you find the fish? The job of the cat is to eat the fish!
So, I don’t expect an importer to be happy that we are producing rice. Therefore, they go around misinforming Nigerians.
I asked USAID to go to the field with African rice and go and show us what happened to rice in those 10 states. They came back and said Nigeria is producing more paddy rice today than it had ever done.
The issue is, we need to accelerate how we mill that rice into finished rice; and that we are doing. Today in Nigeria, you go to Ebonyi and Enugu; Ebonyi rice is the best rice you’d ever have. You go to Benue, you go to Kano — these rice are local rice bought from our farmers, and thus, are creating jobs in rural areas. They are better than the imported rice.
When you talk about food security and ask yourself, of what good is it when somebody sells 15-year-old rice that is laden with chemicals? And people say it is cheaper than our own rice. If I’m selling you junk, I can afford to sell it to you for free.
The fact of the matter is that we are on the right track. Today, our milling capacity for rice in two years has increased by 300 per cent. You see a lot of private investment going on in rice milling in Nigeria; we are determined to be able to establish 40 new integrated rice mills across Nigeria that will mill our increased production of paddy into finished rice, so, we can compete with Thailand.
On why he’s saying this, and why he’s so passionate about this?
I am no Minister of Agriculture for those countries; I am Minister of Agriculture for Nigeria. My job is to make the Nigerian farmer work; mine is to make sure that we actually can replace those imports.
Thailand today is buying paddy rice from their farmers at 200 per cent above the market price; it’s spending $15 billion buying that from their farmers. It has stockpiles of 18 million metric tons of paddy rice. Where do they want to sell it? Nigeria, so they can finish all the farmers that are here. No, that’s not my job.
And so, when people are talking, they should talk with understanding because we cannot be manufacturing poverty in Nigeria. When you ask a president to go and create jobs for you, that president cannot create jobs by magic — your stomach, what you eat.
If you’re buying cassava locally and you are processing it for your cassava bread; if you’re buying local rice and you’re creating jobs for our famers, then we’re creating jobs. That was why we are able to do 2.5 million jobs in agriculture because when you plant, you use labour, when you weed, you use labour, and when you thresh you use labour. Agriculture it is a labour-intensive sector.
On whether it is feasible for the working class to go into farming on part-time basis.
I will be very keen that you don’t get involved in agriculture in your free time; I want you to be in agriculture in your full-time. The reason is because agriculture has the greatest power than any sector to create jobs.
Look at the Forbes Award. The Forbes Award is not (Nigerian); I am a Nigerian and I am proud to be a Nigerian. I’m not going to trade my passport regardless of the challenges we face; I’ll live a Nigerian and die a Nigerian. When it’s resurrection morning, I’ll resurrect as a Nigerian.
There is a reason. It’s not about me, it’s about what I stand for, or what I have lived and continued to fight for all my life, which is that agriculture is a way of creating wealth, not a place where you just maintain poverty; it’s a business.
Why do you think American farmers are rich? Europeans farmers are the same! But for decades, we just see agriculture as a sector, a development sector, keep a number of poor people; in fact, they are so poor that it doesn’t even bother you — it’s normal.
No, agriculture is a business and that’s what we’re doing. That’s why you find us with cassava; we’re the largest producer of cassava in the world. I’m determined; by God’s grace, we’ll be the largest processor of cassava in the world.
We are turning that cassava into starch, turning it into ethanol, chips, exports, and into sweeteners so that we can replace the sugar we are importing, into sorbitol.
You know oral hygiene; all the toothpastes we’re using are made out of starch, cassava starch. Why are we importing those things when we can use our products to do that? We are going to add value to everything we have in Nigeria.
When you talk about fish, Nigeria’s total consumption of fish is about 2.3 million metric tons of fish per year. We produce about 780,000 metric tons of fish then we import the difference.
But God has blessed this country; we have the ocean, we have Rivers Niger and Benue, two of the largest rivers in Africa. We have rivers, creeks, lakes; fish grows in water, not in the air; what is it that we cannot grow fish? Is the fish they are exporting to us grown on land? It’s on water, and we have everything.
For me, I’m passionate that we have to produce and use our potentials. We can shout: we have potential, we have potential nobody eats it. We have turned potential into something, an asset, so that you are not dependent on other nations.
You can import some things that you need, but you’re not dependent on them. So, for fish, what we decided to do is an aggressive programme. That aggressive programme is to make Nigeria self-sufficient in fish over a four-year period.
That strategy has four components. First is the issue of aquaculture — promoting aquaculture massively. Second is distributing inputs to fish farmers; we are doing broomstick, we’re doing fingerlings, we’re doing nets, and getting the young people into agriculture, which is what we are saying. But you’re not going with hoe and cutlass; you’re going with something you can make money.
No comments:
Post a Comment