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DEPT: MARKETING
FACULTY: MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
COURSE TITLE: AGRICULTURE MARKETING
COURSE CODE: MKT 463
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
Northern Nigeria Agricultural Fraud And Irrigation Failure
CHAPTER TWO
A Wake –Up – Call
CHAPTER THREE
· Ways of correcting the failures in our agricultural activities in Nigeria
· Multi-functionality and agricultural policies
· Removing Protectionist
· WTO trade discussions
· References
CHAPTER ONE
(NORTHERN NIGERIA AGRICULTURAL FRAUD AND IRRIGATION FAILURE)
Kano Nigeria –The nation blessed with Africa’s largest oil reserves and some of its most fertile lands leis a problem, it cannot feed its 140 million people, and relatively minor reductions in rainfall could set off a regional food catastrophe, experts say.
Nigeria was major Agricultural exporter before oil discovered off its coast in the 1970 But as it develop into the world’s eight- largest oil producing country , its big farms and plantations were neglected. To day about 10 percent of Nigeria agricultural output comes from inefficient small farms according to the World Bank, and most farmers have little or no access to fertilizers, irrigation or other modern inputs. Most do not even grow enough food to feed their own families. Nigeria has become one of the world’s biggest importers of food staples, particularly rice and wheat, both of which the country could potentially grow in large enough quantities to be self- sufficient. Even with the imports, about 38 percent of Nigerian younger then 5 suffer from moderate or severe malnutrition according to UNICEF, while 65 percent of population ----- are what humanitarian organization call “food insecure” they are to find that they have nothing to eat.
When increased variation in weather patterns, experts envisage for worse to come,
Nigeria is “high- stakes,” said Willian A. master, associate head of Purdue university’s Department of Agriculture Economics and a specialist in Agriculture in Africa “ Malawi successes or Zimbabwe failures are small compound to what happen in Nigeria , “he said the people who have suffered most from Nigeria’s unreliable agricultural output are its impoverished neighbors.
In 2005 when Nigeria had a bad harvest, traders imported grain from Niger which borders Nigeria to the north. The increased demand caused food prices to spike beyond what locals in Niger could afford aid organizations sent in food aid, but much of it was also bought up by traders and directed to markets in Nigeria. Nutritional surveys suggest that untold numbers of children died.
Aid origination say that they are now better prepared for food shortages in Niger and other countries around Nigeria, but that Nigeria itself remains problematic
Its economy is so big and complex we can’t really get a handle on it,” one senior aid official in the region said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media “the idea of a major drought or other disaster in Nigeria is almost too frightening for any one to contemplate.”
CHAPTER TWO
A WAKE –UP – CALL
In theory, Nigeria could cope with a food emergency. The Government is supposed to have the capacity to hold 300, 000 metric ford of grain in reserve but in practice many of the silos for these grains have stand empty or are half- full.
“ At best , the gout’s capacity is 500, 000 metric tons and that capacity is only being half- utilized , said Guido Firetti, silo contractor who recently took over the job of competing a 25, 000 – ton silo that has been under construction for more than 15 years
For many in Nigeria including some gout officials the global food crisis last year was a wake- up –call prices of imported food soared, and the country panicked fearing food riots, the gout announced it would spend 600 million to buy rice regardless of the price the plan was quickly shelved when it become clear that gelling the imported foods to the people who nodded it would take almost as long as the growing the food locally the gout than shifted gears. The money for importing food was reassigned to food self sufficient projects and occurring to Nigeria 2009 budget, the gout spending on agriculture is settle increase the spike in world food prices the world wide recession and the in oil prices have spurred the gout on said Salisu Ingaw , the head of the national food reserve agency “ Now we have to become more food self- sufficient,” Ingaw said embracing a small scale corruption is the usual explanation for why their ostensibly “ rich “ nation remains so under develop. But corruption is just the pure due specialist. Even the most corrupt Nigeria gout invested in some infrastructure projects because they had so much oil unearth, master suggested the problem is that so kittle of what they invested in ended up working he said .
One widely held misconception that Nigeria gout fell for master said is that big farm ventures were inherently more productive that small ones unless they are to be a link in a larger industrial process, he chances are high then will fail,” he said “in most cases large industrial farms don’t have the necessary flexibility one find in smaller family style farms”.
Nigeria development economist Shuaibu Idris said government have transitionally seen small scale farmers as backward, “but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a peasant one –man proprietor farm as long as the farmer can learn to adapt to new realities, small –scale farmers may need to form cooperatives to share to the cost of farm machinery and to buy input at bulk prices, he said.
That is also the conclusion recently embraced by the World Bank. In January, it approved a new $150 million commercial Agriculture Development project in Nigeria designed to support small-and medium scale farmers.
The World Bank new project, which is in the form of a loan to the Government, will improve rural roads for farmers to reduce high transport costs and provide them with better storage facilities.
The Good news is that Nigeria has boundless agricultural potential. Of the 3.14 million irrigable hectares of land in the country, the World Bank says only 7 percent is currently being utilized. And though large tracts of farm land have been lost to desertification more than half the countries estimated 98 million hectares of arable land currently lie fallow.
“The opportunities for our farmers are economics if only they were to get the right institutional support, said Sabo Nanono, farmers association, “we could face the entire lust African region, we could produce enough rice in just two or three (or Nigeria’s (36) states to feed the nation and even to export”.
Some how, the supply chain that feeds 140 million people keeps cranking along. The country has not seen a major famine for meanly four decades, since the Biafran civil was. But Nanono warned that it wouldn’t take much to send this vulnerable country--- and region--- over edge.
“The reality is that if the rains are bad throughout the region or the price of inputs became unalterable, there could be massive food. Shortages, and neither the government nor any other institution stands ready help. He said “then only God could save us”.
David Hecht’s report from Nigeria is part of the food insecurity project, a joint initiative of the Pulitzer center or crisis. Reporting and the project for under sold stones view Hecht’s audio slideshow on the project here. A companion story airs on “The News hour with Jim Lehrer “by special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazara. The food insecurity web site is an interactive portal that features additional articles on food issues that have appeared in. the post and other news outlets. The web sit also gives users the opportunity to engage with journalist directly and to post their own responses, in video and in print.
CHAPTER THREE
WAYS OF CORRECTING THE FAILURES OF AGRICULTURE IN OUR AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES IN NIGERIA
(MULTIFUNCNALITY IN AGRICULTURE)
Multifunctional in Agriculture (often simply multi-functionality) refer to the numerous benefits that agricultural policies may provide for a country or region. Generally speaking multi-functionality refers to the non-trade benefits of agriculture, which is benefits other than commerce and food production: these include in the WTO definition of multi-functionality, environmental protection, landscape-preservation, rural employment, and food security. These can be broadly classified as benefits to society, culture, a national economy as a whole, national security, and other concerns, for example, in addition to providing food and plant derived products for the population, agriculture may also provide jobs for rural people and contribute to the variability of the area. Create a more stable food supply, and provide other desired environmental and rural outputs.
Multi-functionality and agricultural policies
The numerous externalities, both positive and negative, which are associated with agriculture, are important considerations for policy makers. Sometimes cement agricultural practices and markets produce too much of an undesired effort or not enough of desired one. Governments may step in to correct such market failures with policies designed to enter encourage or discourage a certain practice. However, in divided policies may carry consequences for other polices and for other countries. Such policies are therefore a major topic of discussion in the international community.
Removing Protectionist
Policies on Agriculture is one step that may need to be taken for country to maximize positive externalities, minimize negative one and make sure that the mixture of outputs derived form agriculture corresponds to the needs of society. However, removing agriculture supports is often cause or consternation among public officials, who may predict the loss of a certain positive externalities of the policies in already in place. At the same time, officials may fear the implementation of new market protections in their countries which are trying to promote the production of such outputs of agriculture.
In such cases, advocates for free trade such OECD recommend that countries reduce as much as possible. Their agricultural protections and institute policies which specifically target the production the positive non-commodity outputs.
To help countries formulate their agricultural policies, OECD has established a framework for analyzing non-commodity outputs of agricultural activities when analyzing the multifunctional of agriculture and the appropriate policies to implement, there are several concepts that needs to considered. The first of these is joint ness, or the extent to which the intended agricultural product. And the incidental non-commodity outputs of agricultural activities, are linked. The production of some non-commodity outputs may be inseparable form agricultural commodity outputs may be inseparable from agricultural commodity outputs while others may be produced independently of agricultural activity. The goal is to separate agricultural commodity and non-commodity outputs as much as possible. The next issue to be addressed is whether or not the production or non-production of the non-commodity output in question constitutes a market failure. If there is not market failure, there is no need for a policy to correct it.
Finally policy makers should examine the characteristics of the output in question since it may have both a degree of market failure and joint ness associated with it. After considering the matter form these three (3) perspectives, policy makers may find non-governmental ways of addressing dealing with non-commodity outputs or make changes in their agricultural policies.
WTO TRADE DISCUSSIONS
In Agricultural trade discussions in the WTO, the EU and Japan among others, argue that multi-functionality justifies continued protection and subsidization of agriculture. The United States and the claim group argue that support of multifunctional should be specific, targeted and provided in a non-trade distorting manner.
REFERENCES
- www.wto.org/eglish/theritoe/glossary.e/multifunctionality-e.hlm
- “Multifunctionality”, OECD Department for trade and Agriculture
OECD.org,20July2007.
By David Hecht
Special to the washing post Sunday August 2, 2009 , 8: 59 pm women husk Corn at village in Katsina state in Northern Nigeria have little access to modern input such as fertilizers and irrigation (photos by David Hecht for the washing to post )