KEYNOTE
PAPER DELIVERED AT THE 201 3 WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY CELEBRATION IN FEDERAL
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, OWERRI ON JUNE 27TH 2013.
By
PROFESSOR ALFRED
IHEKORONYE, fnifst
EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, AGRO DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE NIGERIA LIMITED
INTRODUCTION:
Beyond Diagnosis And Prescription To Focused Action.
The appalling severity of Africa's food
insecurity and how best to escape it has in recent years and even months been
the subject of many meetings at all levels in the region. Most notable fora
have been the landmark African Union summits of Maputo in January 2003 and at
Sirte in February 2004, which now serve as reference points for all else that
is discussed on this issue.
Africa is also party to global
commitments made under the plan of Action of the UN's 1996 world Food summit
organised by FAO and seeks to achieve the Millennium Development Goals set
under the auspices of the United Nations. It may also be noted that the Maputo
and Sirte commitment on areas of action cover the entire spectrum of
agriculture and food security interventions from farm, through post-harvest and
processing to marketing and trade; they also cover enabling conditions for
success such as financing, human capacities research and technology.
But what is Food Security and what are
its objectives?
The Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations (FAO) noted that Food Security exists when all people at
all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious
food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy
life.
The broad objective of a Food Security
Programme is to contribute to sustainable improvements in the National Food
Security, through rapid increase in productivity and food production on an
economically and environmentally sustainable basis, reduce year to year
variability in agricultural production, and improve people's access to food.
National Special Programme for Food
Security in Nigeria
§ NSPFS is an integrated agricultural
production programme seeking to increase household food security for poor
farming communities in Nigeria.
§ NSPFS presently covers 1 09 sites, one
site for each senatorial district in the country.
§ NSPFS is exclusively funded by the
Federal Government of Nigeria.
§ NSPFS is farmer driven as all
activities are based on farmer's demands.
§ The farmers demand can be summarized as
follows:
-
Timely
provision of agricultural inputs;
-
Access
to credit to acquire inputs.
§ The NSPFS mandate is to respond to
these farmer driven demands in a timely and coordinated fashion.
It implies access to the desired
quantity and quality of food at all times by every man, woman and child in the
nation.
NSPFS was formally launched in Nigeria
on the 1 8"1 of March, 201 3 at Buruku village, Kaduna State.
The project consists of the following: irrigation, soil fertility
improvement, crop intensification, animal production and health, aquatic and
artisan fisheries, marketing, processing and processing components. This
programme is wholly owned and funded by the Federal Government of Nigeria in a
partnership arrangement with FAO providing administrative and technical
support. National ownership is a key element of the Nigerian programme.
The broad objective of the programme is
to contribute to sustainable improvements in the national food security through
rapid increase in productivity and food production on economically and
environmentally, sustainable basis, reduce year to year variability in
agricultural production, and improve people's access to food.
Food security is crucial to sustainable
human development. It rests on a tripod of food availability, affordability and
accessibility.
Women participation in the Food
Security Programme
Please permit me if I wander off a
little bit and reflect on some of the attitudes of the political leadership in
Nigeria to the issue of women's participation in the Special Programme of Food
Security. It is a topic which we tend to relegate to seminars and workshops
such as this. Very few of us give consideration to the fact that women play the
most significant role in food production and must therefore be seen as
occupying a strategic position in our drive to achieve Food Security in
Nigeria. Although there is diversity in household production patterns, women in
Nigeria spend up to two-thirds of their time in traditional agriculture and
marketing, with their work hours tending to exceed those of men. Women in rural
areas grow at least 50-percent of the nation's food. They work in all aspects
of cultivation, including planting, weeding, applying fertilizer and harvesting
as well as post-harvest activities. They are also involved in poultry and
livestock production. While women produce much of the nation's food supply and
are the backbone of food production and provisioning for family consumption,
their productivity is generally low and based on long work hours on small
landholdings. Their names may not always appear in the headlines because they
are not involved in the contest for 2015; and yet to any serious thinker, they
are the ones promoting and sustaining better rural livelihoods. May the
Almighty God bless them.
Government's new paradigm shift:
From
Food Security to Agricultural Transformation
Agenda
In an address presented at the 36'h
Annual conference of the Soil Science Society of Nigeria held at the University
of Nigeria, Nsukka, the Minister of Agriculture commended the commitment of
President Goodluck Jonathan for the launch of "Agriculture Transformation
Action Plan"(ATAP). The ATAP has the objective of improving the
agricultural sector and boosting food production. Government is committed to
increased investment in food and agriculture production with the following as
its policy thrust:
Ø
Creation
of more agriculture and rural employment opportunities to increase the income
of farmers and rural dwellers through modernization of production and creation
of an agricultural sector that is responsive to the demands and realities of
the Nigerian economy.
Ø
Fostering
effective linkage with industry to achieve maximum value addition/processing
for export.
Ø
Under
the Agricultural Transformation Action Plan, fertilizers and other inputs will
be sold directly to farmers.
Ø
Government
will no longer be directly involved in the procurement and distribution of
fertilizers.
Additionally, and because Nigeria is
rated as the world's largest cassava producer, for example, a Cassava
Transformation Plan, using a value-chain development approach has been embarked
upon by the Government under the Agricultural Transformation Program. The
Cassava Transformation seeks to create a new generation of cassava farmers
oriented towards commercial production and farming as a business, and to link
them up to reliable demand, either from processors or a guaranteed minimum
price scheme of the government. The overarching strategy of the cassava
transformation is to turn the cassava sector in Nigeria into a major player in
local and international cassava value-added products by adopting improved
production and processing technologies, and organizing producers and processors
into efficient value-added chains.
The expected outputs in this effort for
example, are starch, HQCF, sweeteners, dried chips, high quality gari, and fuel
ethanol.
Value added Agriculture
Value-added agriculture refers most
generally to manufacturing processes that increase the value of primary
agricultural commodities. Value-added agriculture may also refer to increasing
the economic value of a commodity through particular production processes, e.g.
organic produce, or through originally-branded products that increase consumer
appeal and willingness to pay a premium over similar but undifferentiated
products. Apart from improving farmer's incomes, value addition has the ability
to address the increasing level of unemployment in Nigeria.
Conceived from this perspective, the
post-harvest systems of a country as they evolve from its primary agricultural
production become the most powerful and strategic prime barometer or yardstick
for measuring or determining if the desired agricultural change is taking
place. They perform this function because value-added agricultural products
emanate from primary processing within the farm-gate center, and progressing to
secondary, tertiary and downstream levels, all within the domain of
post-harvest technology.
Keeping this approach in mind, there
are basically three ways in which value addition to farm produce can be
achieved:
Level
1. Post-harvest level/primary processing:
Proper
cleaning, grading and packaging e.g vegetables, potatoes, yams, fruits,
tomatoes, etc.
Level
2. Secondary processing: basic processing, packaging and branding e.g. packed rice, millet, maize,
cowpeas etc.
Level
3. High end/downstream processing: supply chain management, modern processing
technology, packaging of processed foods, branding, marketing e.g. potato
chips, plantain chips, breakfast food, noodles, macaroni, etc.
All these levels will economically add
value to a product and form characteristics more preferred in the market place.
Role
of Value Addition in Transforming Nigerian Agriculture.
The roles of value addition within the
context of Agricultural Transformation in Nigeria are multiple and catalytic.
This is so because value addition embraces the range of technological questions
that constitute the basis of the transformative operations of processing
including importantly, a consideration of regenerative R&D that ensures
that processing remains at all times competitive. Experience from around the
world has shown that crop campaigns to raise productivity require a close
partnership with research and development of enabling technologies.
In addition, and most importantly,
value addition is at the critical milestone on the road to any meaningful
transformation from primary agricultural production to agro-industrialization.
Value-addition accelerates the growth
of economic development which is the process by which an economy is transformed
from one that is dominantly rural and agricultural to one that is predominantly
urban, industrial, and service-oriented in composition.
From Cassava alone, each of these
values added products- starch, HQCF, sweeteners, dried chips, high quality
gari, and fuel ethanol, is a harbinger of very strong industrial base.
With respect to wider industrial
development of the country, value addition becomes an alternative production
and marketing strategy that requires a better understanding of the rapidly
changing food industry and food safety issues, consumer preference and
effective agricultural management. There are various ways of adding value to a
commodity and in a country like Nigeria, the scope of value addition is
mind-boggling because of the availability of raw material and large market
size. Six primary roles are important here:
Ø Value addition to agricultural produce
reduces qualitative and quantitative losses of agricultural produce by bringing
industrial processing nearer to the" sources of raw; material production.
Ø It augments foreign-exchange earnings
by providing the basis for export of processed products and extractives rather
than low-value raw materials and semi-processed products.
Ø Provides much-needed experience and
training in the dispersal of industrial growth to backward and rural areas so
as to generate new and enhanced employment opportunities.
Ø Creates enhanced opportunities for
expanded spread of ownership of production units.
Ø Value addition stimulates the
development of technological capabilities in terms of the capacity to engage in
different scales of productive technologies in food processing.
Ø Fosters the development of engineering
capabilities to design and manufacture food processing and ancillary machinery.
Clearly,
these six elements continually interact and must be understood if any form of
transformation in the agricultural sector is to begin.
Commodity
Value-added Chain Activities in Nigerian Agriculture.
Since marketing of value-added products
is more remunerative than raw commodities, farmer-processor linkages are needed
to add value as per demands of the consumers. There is a great scope of
developing some of our traditional food items from root and tuber crops, cereal
grains and oil seeds, fruits and vegetables and flesh foods; and add value to
them and form characteristics more preferred in quality and sensory attributes
in the market place. Presented here (Table 1), is an attempt made to present
sections of value added products to Nigerian agricultural produce, based on
agricultural food resources of the country's ecosystems.
Table 1 Globalised
Scheme of value-added chain products of the Nigeria Agricultural produce based
on food resources of the country's ecosystem
|
Commodity
|
Value Added products
|
|
Cassava
|
Gari, High Quality
Cassava Flour, Starch, glucose, Fuel ethanol, dried chips, Pellets, Garina
|
|
Yam
|
Instantized yam flour,
chips
|
|
Potatoes, Plantain
|
Chips, Starch, Plantain
chips
|
|
Cocoyam
|
Flour, chips
|
|
Rice
|
Brown and white rice,
rice flour, parboiled rice, Rice noodles
|
|
Maize and sorghum
|
Maize flour, popped corn,
sorghum flour, popped sorghum
|
|
Soya beans
|
Soymilk, soyflour,
soybean oil, soy-yoghurt, soy-based ice cream
|
|
Cowpeas
|
Cowpea flour
|
|
Groundnuts
|
Peanut butter, peanut
brittle, peanut oil, kulikuli
|
|
Palm fruits
|
Palm oil, palm kernel
oil, margarine, soap.
|
|
Cocoa, coffee beans
|
Cocoa powder, coffee
powder
|
|
Fruit and vegetables
|
Fruit juices, cordials,
squash and syrup, fruit beverages, fruit leather, fruit bars, Tomato ketchup,
Tomato paste, Jam, Fruit wine.
|
|
Ginger
|
Ginger powder,
oleoresins, essential oils
|
|
Cashew fruits
|
Cashew nuts, Cashew wine
|
|
Flesh foods
|
Snack Meat Products
(Kilishi, Suya), Salted Smoked Fish. Milled Dried Meat Products, (fish,
meat)Gelatin.
|
Equipment
Requirement
Root and tuber crops Rice processing
Palm fruit processing Cereal Grain Milling Spaghetti products Groundnut
Root
and tuber crops
Self powered cassava grating equipment Screw/hydraulic press Fermentation holding bay for cassava
mash Sifter (for fiber separation from mash) Gari frying equipment (community fryer) Gari milling and screening equipment for
product diversification (plate mill) Packaging equipment Diesel engine (6-8Hp water cooled),
with mount fixtures concrete slab or demountable Chipping machine Pelleting machine.
Rice
processing into destoned brown and white rice, and rice flour.
Parboiler Concrete slab or demountable dryer Rice huller and polisher 1 6-Hp water-cooled two cylinder diesel
engine Plate mill (for rice brokens) Bag sealer and scales Destoner
Palm
fruit processing for palm oil extraction
Stripper Sterilizer Digester/Extractor/Presser Clarifier Nut Cracker and Kernel oil Press
(optional)
Cereal
grain milling into flour (custom milling)
Plate mill or burr mill (pulley driven) Hammer mill, particularly for maize a Sifter 16Hp water cooled static diesel engine Weighting scales Bag sealers.
Spaghetti
production from wheat flour and composite flour.
Ampia 150 Superlusso spaghetti making
machine
Groundnut
processing into groundnut oil and cake
8Hp static diesel engine Groundnut roaster/scorcher Hammer mill Screw/hydraulic press Filter
Yam
processing into Yam flour reconstitutable into yam fufu or amala
Dicing machine Blancher Dryer Plate mill Impulse sealer 8Hp static diesel engine
Plantain
processing into flour and chips
Slicer Dryer Plate mill Fryer 8Hp static diesel engine Impulse sealer
Fish
and Meat processing into smoked fish and smoked meat production
Smoking kiln Table with smooth surface Cutting knife Buckets and basin Packaging materials Hammer mill
SUMMARY
Evidence from the field and
beneficiaries' perceptions show that the NSPFS implementation has improved the
productivity and sustainability of small holder agricultural systems with
obvious improvement in beneficiaries' livelihoods, food security and
socio-economic status. Strategies and approaches adopted in the implementation
of the various activities under the Programme confirm the assertion that when
productivity enhancing technologies and an efficient input delivery system are
combined with dependable credit system and human capital development, farm
productivity will improve, income will increase and farmers become empowered.
And
in conclusion
I must state loud and clear that
post-harvest systems encompassing primary processing within the farm-gate
center and progressing to secondary, tertiary and downstream processing to add
value and enhance market potential of agricultural produce are the critical
prime movers of Food Security and agricultural change which in the present
democratic dispensation in Nigeria dovetails nicely with the Transformation
Agenda.
