Dr. Paul Ilona is the Country Director of Harvestplus Nigeria. In this interview with ZAINAB ONI, he calls for an end to obsolete traditional agricultural practices in the country, insisting that if the habit persists, Nigeria will not optimise its full yield. The expert also hails government’s fresh policy on mass exportation of yam. Excerpts:
How would you assess crop production practices in Nigeria?
When we talk about crop production practices, it is very broad; ranging from rural farming to commercial agriculture, etc. As per crop production, the very first thing that comes to mind is that, nobody grows crops today as a hobby and so the primary driving objective today is yield.
You want to increase the yield of your crop and increasing your crop’s yield comes from two directions: you want to ensure food security for the society and at the same time make sure that you make some income for a living.
If that is the case, we will now want to look at what the current practices of farmers are. In doing that, we must take into consideration, what the yield of farmers’ harvest will look like and what should be the norm, aimed at optimising the yield of crops. If you look at crops like cassava, yam, sweet potato, rice and the rest of them, you will realise that Nigerians have not been able to optimise the yield yet.
How do you mean?
Let us take maize for example; the average yield of maize in Nigeria today is about 2 tonnes per hectare, while in the United States, it is well over 10 tonnes per hectare. Even in South Africa, it is well over 6 tonnes per hectare; so it means that the yield of maize in Nigeria is less than 33% of what current yield levels are, in some advanced countries.
If you take the case of cassava for instance, the average yield of cassava in Nigeria is still below 10 tonnes per hectare, according to FAO records. We know that cassava can give you over 50 tonnes per hectare, so that is what we call a yield gap that currently exists.
What is responsible for the development?
The gap is linked to our cropping practices; so it’s like the case of a child that genetically should grow to 6 feet but if you don’t give the child what is required at the very early stage, the child may not die but may not grow to 6 feet and so genetically, the child is 6 feet but physically, it’s only 4.5 feet and that is the case in crop culture.
If you go to many villages, you will realise that farmers are recycling old knowledge, old practices that our forefathers developed, for their own environment then, when there was abundant land and people could move from one land to another, which they call shifting cultivation; because people had access to land. Today, you cannot shift.
That same land that you have is what you have got; nobody is going to shift again. People’s cropping practices have not changed, it is still what we had 500 years ago that is still there today and the question is, for how long will Nigerians continue to treat agriculture with so much levity, only imagining that once you put things into the ground, they will grow? But really, the fact that they grow doesn’t make you a farmer.
But don’t you think unavailability of land could add to the low yield challenge?
I am not interested in the land area a farmer owns. I am a lot interested in the yield you get per unit area. So the Nigerian farmer is one in getting the optimum yield per unit area in Nigeria but economically, if you do some very quick calculation, if one farmer has 10 hectares of cassava and he gets 10 tonnes per hectare, it means his crop yield is 100 tonnes; that is, 10 multiplied by 10. Compare it with a farmer who has 2 hectares and gets 40 tonnes per hectare. So you get 80 tonnes from 2 hectares and yet you are spending the same amount per hectare, to get a yield.
What is the implication of lack of access to funds in all of these?
It is not a question of money, it is a question of ethics, a question of approach and so, all put together, if you look at the case of cassava, maize , yam and most of other crops, they are affected the same way. I remember some five years ago, I estimated the common errors that farmers make growing cassava and we came up with about at least 25 errors and these errors are associated with what we all learnt from our forefathers and The Point, therefore, is that, agricultural practices should be dynamic and not static.
So, what the practice was 50 years ago when our lands were very much fertile and we had crop varieties that were very much adopted and the quest for income wasn’t this high, is still in practice today. And that should not be the case.
Over the years, Nigeria has been known as the largest yam producer in the world; but then, we are still one of the least exporters of yam. You can see that those two analogies don’t add up
Recently, the Federal Government launched an initiative on yam exportation. What is your view on that policy, considering the fact that local demands have not been met yet?
The yam initiative is a good one and in fairness, what we need to ask ourselves as Nigerians is; what you did I put into the system to act as a catalyst to drive it? Over the years, Nigeria has been known as the largest yam producer in the world; but then, we are still one of the least exporters of yam. You can see that those two analogies don’t add up.
Look at Ghana near us, look at the Carribeans, they produce much less yam but have dominated the export market. What is happening now is long overdue and the trick of mandating yam exportation as catalyst to drive production is a welcome development. If you check up what (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo did in the early 2000, when he launched the mass production of cassava, we could see its success. As at then, Nigeria was producing just about 32 million metric tonnes of cassava per annum and just few years after that initiative, Nigeria started producing 45 million metric tonnes. Can you beat that?
You will see that we need such initiative to drive production. If Nigeria sustains that tempo, food production will receive great boost. Forget about the argument on the need to meet local consumption first. What farmers are currently producing is a function of demand. If a farmer today is planting 4 hectares of yam, it is because the demand for tubers of yam from at least I hectare will not be hard to come about. So when we start exporting it, it is going to have a pool on its production.
How does our being the largest producer of yam translate to gross domestic product’s boost?
Government should try to get farmers to respond to that market and that will come in the area of improved productivity, access to inputs, most essentially, ensuring that we must distribute those yam varieties that qualify for export, because it is not all varieties of yam that can go for export.
If you look at those varieties that are demanded in the international market, it means most of our farmers should begin to produce them. In Ghana, the most common yam variety that is exported is called Puna and in Nigeria, Puna is very close to an Abuja yam. Some others like Igongon and Ewura cannot go into the international market.
