Senator Abubakar Kyari , Minister of Agriculture and Food Security.

There is high inflation on food items in Nigeria. The antidote to this is food production. Senator Abubakar Kyari , Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, in this interview, speaks on the efforts by the President Bola Tinubu administration to transform the sector to one that can adequately feed Nigerians, with excess to export, and at the same time be a job creator for teeming citizens.

What is the administration’s agriculture mechanisation programme like?

We have four programmes in place now that we are looking at seriously. One is the Greener Hope Programme, a project- midwifed by origin Tech Group, an indigenous company that seeks to establish 1,000 agro-service centres countrywide

It’s going to be a public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement where youths and women will be trained to man those centres providing essential services including tractor hiring services and aggregation services among others. Such that those smallholder farmers that may not be able to afford tractors can hire or lease a tractor to do their farm preparations.

In addition, we will also have advisory farm service centres to essentially encourage clusterisation of farmlands because that will be much easier for tractorisation when you have contiguous farmland, so that we can have either clusters or cooperatives that can come together and develop huge parcels of farmland for ease of preparation and harvests.

We’re going to have combined harvesters and all other agricultural implements. Almost all the four different programmes have almost equal ratio of number of tractors for instance. So tractorisation projects will provide 2,000 tractors per annum for the next five years.

The Greener Hope Programme, a $1 billion programme with a $200 million counterpart funding from Nigeria, will be backed by a consortium of international finance institutions that will come up with the remaining balance, and like I said, the youths are going to be employed as major participants in those programmes .

The duration of the programme is 10 years, but the tractorization is five years. So the significance of that is that we’re going to have 2,000 tractors every year for the next five years, which is 10,000 tractors, and all other implements. Apart from these, about 10,000 different implements; from ploughs, harrows, seeders, planters for every of the 2000 tractors we’ll have different implements and accessories that will be attached as well as spare parts. The Greener Hope has been approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

Then, the other one that was in the making was the John Deere. Initially, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding for John Deere to provide 2,000 tractors per year for the next five years. That will also come with implements. However, Mr. President has directed that we go for direct procurement to accelerate the delivery of those 2,000 tractors. So, the procurement process is ongoing and very soon as we get the Certificate of No Objection, we will present to FEC for onward passage.

Then another mechanisation project that has gotten procurement nod is the one from Belarus Tractors. As you know, Belarus Tractors is a world-renowned tractors company with tractors that are durable, that has been known to me and my team from the Ministry for a long time, including even the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture. We had just visited Belarus and went to the factory and inspected about 186 tractors that were in the process of being ready for shipment to Nigeria for this programme.

That is also a 2,000-tractor batch comprising four different types; 80 horsepower and 90 horsepower, two-wheel drives and four-wheel drives for each of the different categories, which will have 500 each. That also will come with all the other implements with about 9,000 assorted sets of spare parts. The project also composes of 12 mobile service workshops that will come along with all needed supply items.

We will also use the service centres that we intend to establish to feed-in those tractors and have 10 150 horsepower combined harvester included.

Then the fourth is, the Green Imperative Programme (GIP), which is sponsored by the Brazilian Government. It has been in the works for the past six years but has never really taken off. But what we have done within one year has exceeded what was done in the past six years. So it is now seven years actually in the making. The Green Imperative Programme is a 950 million Euro programmme that will be funded by Deutsche Bank, with the backing of the Islamic Development Bank. That does not require any counterpart funding, but it requires a sovereign guarantee.

In addition, GIP seeks to provide one service centre for every local government, 774 LGAs of the federation. Like the Greener Hope, the GIP is also giving extension service and all other agricultural advisory services at those 774 service centers.

What is most important in all the mechanization programmmes is that we have seen what government had done in the past; whether it is leasing, whether it is tractor hiring, whether it is patronage and you give away tractors, they all didn’t seem to work. What we want to do is incentivize the private sector to drive those projects. Most of our tractors that will come, especially like that of the John Deere, will have telemetric system that will tell us how the tractor is doing, how many hours has it worked, how many acres or hectares as it plowed or harrowed, that way we keep tabs of what the tractor is doing and how productive? If they are below expectation then we’ll say look, you’re behind. Out there, we will encourage and incentivize them to do much. With all these programmes, we expect that within the next one year, hopefully, there will be a minimum of 6,000 tractors that is coming into the pool: 2,000 from Belarus, 2,000 from John Deere, 2,000 from Greener Hope.

GIP has not taken root, but there are a lot of processes in the works. So hopefully as soon as that is concluded, I will be able to tell precisely what that will bring in.

In addition, while we are talking about tractorisation, we are also looking at massive purchase of combined harvesters. Simple reason is that we want to encourage all-year round farming. Part of the problems that we have now is the non-availability of arable land for dual purposes. I have seen, for instance, last November when we went to Jigawa to launch the wheat season, that rice was still on the field, the wet season rice, that have not been harvested. If that was harvested, then we’ll have additional field for the wheat because they almost use the same kind of agricultural land. Mostly, harvesting is done manually. But if you have a harvester that does a hectare or one and a half hectares per hour, you can think about the tremendous improvement in just two weeks.

So if we have harvesters then we can make land available for wheat to be planted, and then shortly after the wheat, we can also do another rice because you have a lot of land that is available. So we are looking at harvesting, especially those fields where we can do both irrigation farming and rain-fed.

Also combined harvesters reduce tremendously post-harvest losses that result from manual harvesting. When you go to every rice farm that has been harvested manually, you’ll see a lot of grains on the farmland simply because it’s not thoroughly done and in that type of harvesting you have manhandling and shaking that is manual, that’s not scooped right from the beginning.  About 30 per cent loss usually recorded from manual harvesting is huge. So we’re looking at ways to reduce that.

Then, the other one is storage. Like right now, as I’m talking to you, rice is being harvested in some areas. The fields that were cultivated during dry season. Now it’s raining in some of these places, meaning that there’s a lot of humidity and moisture. So, if you don’t store it properly, then you will find out there will be contamination of the seeds. This is because harvested rice have a moisture content that if not evaporated, will result in molding effect on those grains. We’re also looking at that so as to make sure that we reduce those losses. So there’s the issue of storage.

Then, those service centres. Some bigger farming local governments can have two service centres while others will have one each. Then as we grow and we see the benefits, once you expose it to private sector, you will see the interest that it will generate and the kind of money that people will make, thereby serving the farmer. The farmers will get value, the players will get value, the entire country gets the value. So that’s what we’re looking at.

Let me say something, I will say that days are gone when you provide subsidy to farmers. How much can you give? How many farmers can you support? The last figure that I saw by the National Bureau of Statistics, from the National Agricultural Sample Census that was just launched a couple of weeks ago, we have about 40 million farmers in Nigeria. So you could just imagine if you’re just going to give one bag of fertiliser to every farmer, that’s 40 million bags. So the best way is to provide an environment for the farmer to grow and he’ll be happy to do it. Make him to cut down his losses and provide an incentive for him to participate, because as I’m telling you, part of the problems that we’re facing, and we are seeing it today, is that people are not interested in labourous activities. Bending the back, using a hoe, that is an ancient implement, because you can’t show me even one factory in this whole wide world that manufactures a hoe, no, we’ve gone past that. The world has moved away from there, we can’t stay in the archaic times. Hoes were made in the local blacksmith in the rural areas. So we should move ahead and this is precisely what President Tinubu is doing. We’re going to have a robust mechanisation programme and by the time this is done, Nigeria will see the benefit.

If this much is being put into the agriculture and food security sector, how soon should Nigerians expect to see food on their tables?

Like I always say, it will take you time to build a house, but to do destroy it takes a few minutes, but then to build it back again, it’s also going to take time. I know there has never been any determination like this before, never, and we believe within the next couple of years, we should see the revival of agriculture. Even now as it is, because of the attendant commitment that the President has shown, we see a lot of interests generated for people to go back to farm, even though it’s still in its crude stage. But by the time we roll out the heavy mechanisation that we intend to do, then you’ll see the interests.

So much efforts are being invested in food crops, what about cash crops?

Well, the reason I’m talking to you about food crops now is because it is the main item now on food security, but we have engaged with cocoa producers, cashew producers, cassava producers; cassava is both food and cash, and we have also engaged with palms producers. Just recently, Minister of Agriculture from Saudi Arabia came and we exposed him to our agribusiness entrepreneurs and their interest is in soya, red meat and also grass for animal feed. So, these are all enormous opportunities.

Look at what we’re doing with ginger, especially with the ginger blight that affected the ginger crop in about five states last year and the intervention that we’re doing now, that is being driven by one of our agencies, the National Agricultural Development Fund, that is there supporting the farmers to recover some of their losses. I would also want to use this opportunity, because of that plight, to explain that we also have a Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation that seeks to de-risk our agricultural produce. We want to bring that up for the people who are going back into the field now. It’s in the process of being recapitalised and restructured. So also, is the Bank of Agriculture, all under the platform of the National Council on Privatisation, which is driven by the Bureau for Public Enterprises, to make sure that it’s properly reorganised and recapitalised. Talking about access to capital for smallholder farmers, we’re also looking at collaboration with states because we want to raise credible and reliable farm and farmers’ data for proper agricultural credit administration.

How much collaboration are you getting from the states for all your programmes?

Let me say that, from my interaction from within the Ministry and from the agricultural space, we have never seen collaboration between the federal government and subnationals as it is now.

Today, even as a Ministry, we have received over 16 governors that visited us. They came to us because I have written to all the governors for collaborative efforts. Everything that we do, we to try to see how we can strategise with the subnationals. Like I said, the land is situated at the states and without their collaboration, nothing much will be achieved. And this is beyond partisan politics, almost all the state Chief Executives from the different parties have come visiting and  expressed willingness to collaborate with the Federal Government.

In addition, even at the last NEC meeting, when Mr. President addressed the governors, he called for the same collaborative efforts and they have made their commitments to partner with the Federal Government. In some states, we have seen heightened activities in the agricultural space. There are states that obviously have more programmes than others, but we have seen that every state has its own comparative and competitive advantage.  Those that we have identified their competitive and comparative advantage, that have taken up the commitment, the determination is there to make sure that they succeed. For instance, we have seen Niger State mechanisation programme, we have seen Jigawa in the direct intervention by the governor, Kebbi State, Katsina State, Kaduna State, Borno State (that developed seven standard irrigation sites for dry season farming).

So we have seen the commitment coming from a lot of governors in recent times. Even in the area of the agro-processing zone for instance, Gombe has gone ahead to establish their own agro-processes zone, which is something of interest to us. So we have not seen these collaborative efforts in the past and that’s why we are directing half of the fertilizer that Mr. President directed the Central Bank to give to us to the state governments directly for onward distribution to their farmers and half will do our programmes and also help medium and large scale private farmers.

There is the security question on the agriculture sector. How do you hope to manage security so you can achieve the utmost in your programme?

I’ll tell you one thing that we have seen, especially within the last one year, is that people are having access to agricultural land that hitherto they could not access before now. We have seen the heightened movement back to farmland, which means that insecurity has been on the decline. In fact, Katsina State Governor has mentioned to us that a lot of his land has been free of insecurity now and people are determined that they are going back to farm and now people are going back.

So I would look at more of the other aspect that’s hampering agriculture more than the insecurity in terms of even the willingness for people to participate and that is why we’re doing the robust mechanization program so as to incentivize people to go back to agriculture. That is one way that Mr. President has seen that we need to tackle, it’s mechanization; good seeds, good extension services and then lower prices of inputs and it’s going to be on a macro level, not on micro level. So we have engaged with fertilizer producers, with a view to looking at cost structures and what they can do about reducing costs of those fertilizers.

There is also livestock. What is Nigeria’s focus on livestock farming?

Last year Mr. President received a report to do with the implementation of the Renewed Hope Livestock Transformation Programme and he mandated me to look into the report and we drew up the terms of reference for the implementation committee. The programme included the possibility of ranching, as part of ways to ameliorate the farmers/herder’s issue. We also looked at the possibility of exploring the dynamic value chains of the livestock industry in its entirety because that has a tremendous potential. We have what it takes to turn around the livestock industry in Nigeria. We have the land we have the climate and the environment and we also have the technique and also the knowledge for crossbreeding where we can develop cattle that would give more milk, for dairy cattle, and then good beef for beef cattle.

As I talk to you the committee has been put in place and very soon Mr. President is going to inaugurate that committee. That committee will spell out the way forward and will be given a mandate, a short period of time, on how they want to roll out the programme and what governance structures, what is the private sector mandates and all that and look at the value chain, in terms of how do you incentivize the pastoralist to key into this. By the way, even when he met with the governors at NEC, he asked them to give him the availability of land for this livestock programme. So that also is in the process and I believe we’re going to have a very robust and transformative livestock programme. It has never been looked at in this fashion and we believe it’s going to be far-reaching and we have professionals, technocrats from different parts of the country, from different fields of relevance in this livestock programme to drive this implementation committee. By the time you see the membership when it is inaugurated, I’m sure you see what I’m talking about.

How would rate the universities of agriculture, would you say they played their role as solution providers?

Like I mentioned earlier that there are also huge organizations like IITA Ibadan that have collaborative programmes with our research institutes and with the universities of agriculture and Departments of Agriculture of the universities across the country. We have other Agencies that are situated in universities. We have Nigerian Agriculture Extension Research Liaison Service, which is situated at the Ahmadu Bello University, that is also an agency under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.

That is what we’ve been trying to develop. A healthy relationship between the academics, the scientist, the agricultural scientists, agricultural economist, agricultural technologists, to come up with a robust plan. Mr. President will soon give them the marching order to come up with a robust plan. It’s not adequate enough to say we have the land, we’re an agricultural country, I think what we’re also looking is human and societal behaviours.

For a lot of people that grew up in the 70s and 80s, they knew that agriculture is something that was practiced in the household, but today we find our kids are more into AI and other similar scientific developments. So what we are saying is how can we correlate technology into agriculture? For instance, there are drones today that can do fertilization, that can do crop spraying for chemicals against pests.

So how can we incorporate technology? One way, for instance, that I’ve been talking with the Minister for Communication and Digital Economy is to device the models for deployment of these innovations into Extension Services. Today, because of high costs of extension workers to go round, we can employ digital platforms for communication and advisory services. Even the farmer, if he has a problem in his farm, can take the picture of that plant and send it and can be given advisory service. So we can use platforms like that, technology to utilize and make agriculture simpler and easier.

There are so many things we’re looking at, but first, you have to develop that interest for our youths to go into agriculture. Even if you make it simpler, still you must have a captive audience. What are your captive audience, even if it’s to drive a tractor or combined harvester. For an eight year old, it would be difficult to do that and a 16-year old must be encouraged to go to school. So you must have that age in between. So what do you do, you need to incentivize them, using technology, using mechanization and so on and so forth and that will drive the agriculture.

We’ll also look at investments in agriculture. What I see today, people who have some excess capital now go into real estate, trading and things like that. We can also invest because the multiplier effects or the rate of returns in agriculture is very high. If it’s done properly, it is very profitable. The Jigawa State Government invested about N5.4 billion in the wheat programme, the federal government invested N8 billion in that state, for 40,000 hectares but at the end of the day they cultivated 55,000 hectares.