In this concluding part of his report, KUNLE FALAYI writes on the challenges facing cocoa and rice production and lack of capacity of farmers in the face of huge market for the crops
Continued from last week
An illicit crop fuelled by high consumption
In Nigeria, where there is a strong marijuana culture, the hemp is prohibited by an act of parliament as a result of its high rate of abuse and absence of medical or non-smoking application in the country. It is the single most abused drug in the country.
According to the World Drug Report of the United Nations Office of Drug and Crime, Nigeria ranks sixth on the list of the top 10 highest users of marijuana or cannabis with a 14.3 per cent use in the country.
The seizures and destruction of cannabis by Nigeria’s drug agency alone attests to the magnitude of the industry.
Between 2013 and 2015, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency destroyed farmlands containing 68.1 million kilogrammes of cannabis, with a street value of N681bn.
In 2013, out of the 339,968kg of drug seized by the NDLEA, 205,373kg of it was cannabis alone. That year, the agency destroyed 847 hectares of farmland across the country, containing an estimated 10,051,554kg of cannabis.
In 2014, the agency seized 158,852kg of cannabis and destroyed 4,529 hectares of cannabis farmland containing an estimated 53,719,342kg of cannabis plants.
The following year (2015), the cannabis seizure was unprecedented. The NDLEA seized 871,480kg (871 tonnes) of cannabis and destroyed 377 hectares of hemp farmland containing 4.4 million kilogrammes of cannabis. That year, in one of several seizures in Ondo State, the agency found 34,080kg (34 tonnes) of cannabis in a single location in the state.
In contrast, Nigeria produced 721,000 metric tonnes of cocoa in the same three-year period. In the 2012/2013 season, the national cocoa output was 238,000 metric tonnes, 248,000 in 2013/2014 and 235,000 in 2014/2015. If one uses current exchange rate, this will all amount to N527.7bn at current cocoa’s international price.
Current challenges of cocoa production
Over the last five decades, Nigeria fell from its position as second largest producer of cocoa in the world to fourth after Ivory Coast, Indonesia and Ghana. In the 2014/2015 season, the country produced 235,000 metric tonnes.
The Federal Government presently clamours for more interest by youths in agriculture in the face of dwindling oil revenue, which accounts for 90 per cent of the country’s exports.
But many challenges that have kept the sector in the doldrums remain unaddressed.
One of them is low capacity of farmers and lack of mechanisation.
An Ondo State indigene, who had lived in Germany for over four decades, Mr. Olusegun Arowolo, said he was so concerned by this problem that he invented a machine, which he said could break as much as 20,000 to 30,000 cocoa pods per hour without destroying the beans.
After eight years of designing the machine, he eventually found a company to build it and ship it to Nigeria.
He said, “If the government is serious about diversification, you have to encourage young people to get involved in agriculture and stay there. Cocoa production can only attract people when they know there are machines to aid the process.
“My machine is the missing link in cocoa processing. If you put one million pods of cocoa on the ground, imagine how many weeks it would take to break the pods by hand. Now imagine having a machine that can achieve the same thing in a few hours. If the government is serious about returning cocoa production to its past glory, it has to make this sort of machines available to farmers.”
In the 60s through the 70s, the value chain of cocoa production was strong with marketing boards and farmers’ cooperatives serving as middlemen. All these disappeared in the era of Nigeria’s oil boom.
Stakeholders say these have to be restored while the companies serviced by cocoa products, many of which have disappeared over the years, have to be encouraged with policies and incentives.
In the Agriculture Promotion Policy prepared by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development few weeks ago, the Federal Government recognised inability to meet domestic food requirements, and inability to export at quality levels required for market success as the two main challenges facing agriculture in the country.
“The former problem is a productivity challenge driven by an input system and farming model that is largely inefficient. As a result, an aging population of farmers do not have enough seeds, fertilizers, irrigation, crop protection and related support to be successful,” the Minister, Audu Ogbeh, said.
Effort to recapture cocoa’s lost glory
In 2014, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said it had distributed 140 million high yield cocoa seedlings to farmers.
But local farmers such as those at Ogbese, only wondered where all of it went to.
“We heard that rather than distribute to farmers like us, government officials sold the seedlings to their friends,” Olanrewaju, told our correspondent.
In 1976, to entrench cocoa production further in the southwest and provide jobs, the Oda Cocoa Farm Estate, a 1,774-hectare plantation, was established by the then Premier (Awolowo). But it was abandoned for decades in the era of oil boom.
The Ondo State Government in 2015 started a process to resuscitate the estate in what it tagged a “Cocoa Revolution Programme”.
Chairman of the CRP, Dr. Jibayo Oyebade, said it is a programme that would create large scale wealth for the state.
The vision is to resuscitate the lost glory of cocoa. We were given the mandate to rehabilitate all cocoa plantations in Ondo State.
He said, “We want to re-establish the old marketing board and go back to the quality that made cocoa produced in this state stand out. We plan to double the existing output of the country by rehabilitating the existing old trees. We don’t want to destroy the old trees and plant new ones. Within the next three to four years, we plan to double the production of last year.
“As part of the CRP, we have volunteer farm locations. We went to private cocoa farmers and took one in each location. We are training and building their capacities outside the Oda’s 1,774- hectare cocoa estate.”
Oyebade said those who are leaving the cocoa cultivation for Indian hemp in the state are aware of the fact that the state has the largest forest reserve in the country.
He said the cultivation of cannabis festered in the forest reserves because the government had abandoned reserves protection, leading to the infiltration of drug cartel.
“There are portions of the forest reserves that we termed ‘encroached areas’. A little of these areas is used by some people to cultivate cocoa but the larger part of the encroached areas are used to cultivate hemp,” he said.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has, however, promised that it would work closely with states and agencies to prioritise the cultivation of cocoa and other crops such as cowpea, cashew, cassava (starch, chips and ethanol), ginger, sesame, oil palm and yams for export.
Rice on the hills, rice in the valley
While cannabis cultivation in the cocoa centre of Nigeria begins to fester very fast, its tentacles have extended to a neighbouring state, Ekiti, that also once occupied a peculiar position in the country’s agricultural sector.
At the time cocoa was the crop of wealth in Ondo State, rice was the forte of Ekiti State.
“There were rice on the hills and rice in the valley in this town. 15 years ago, if you looked at the horizon around March, you would marvel at the expanse of rice fields like one giant football field all around the hills surrounding this town,” a native of Efon Alaaye, Ekiti State, Chief Bayo Ajayi, told our correspondent.
While rice was widely cultivated in many towns in the state at the period Ajayi referred to, one town stood tall as the ‘headquarters’ of the cultivation in the state – Igbemo-Ekiti. This is a town that is still synonymous with rice cultivation in many parts of the country.
But our correspondent noted during a visit that the quiet and rural nature of the community bears little resemblance to the reputation it has as little economic activity takes place there.
Few meters from the town centre and marketplace, in one of the array of shops surrounding the location, was a woman, Mama Lydia, tending to her display of foodstuffs.
It was surprising to realise that the rice Mama Lydia displayed prominently on her stand was not the local rice produced in the town but polished imported rice.
Could she ever be able to sell imported rice in a town known for local rice cultivation in the state? The answer she gave instantly explained a lot.
Mama Lydia said, “Our people here buy imported rice more than local rice o. That is because very few people cultivate rice again. Most of the youths are running after local government jobs. Tell any youth to take up rice cultivation here, and he would curse you because he believes you are cursing him.
“The hard work and stress of using your bare hands to cultivate a large expanse of land of rice makes our people see it as bad. This is why the local rice is more expensive than imported rice. Those who manage to produce some quatity of the rice here cannot afford to sell at low price,” she said.
Huge demand, low capacity
After more than 70 years of rice cultivation in Igbemo-Ekiti, no form of mechanisation has been introduced in any part of the town. The result is a gradual “death” of a crop that used to make the locals proud.
Despite Ekiti State’s history of rice production, politicians in the state regularly “bless” the residents with 1kg sachet of imported rice distributed in towns during festive periods.
Unfortunately, in this state with a little over 2.3 million people, according to the National Population Commission, as rice cultivation peters out, cannabis farming rises at an alarming rate. In fact, like Ondo State, Ekiti is now one of the highest producers of cannabis in the country.
Again, like in the case of Ondo cocoa farmers, the incursion of hemp cartels developed in the state as families leased out the lands they no longer have the capacity to cultivate.
Also, the drug cartels are taking advantage of the huge expanse of forest reserves in some parts of the state to cultivate cannabis in areas that cannot be easily accessed.
Ekiti State first rose to prominence in cannabis cultivation few years ago, but in 2014 the NDLEA made a startling discovery that further established the scale of cannabis cultivation in the state.
The agency conducted a sting operation across the four major cannabis producing states in the country – Ekiti, Edo, Delta and Kogi. At the end of the raid, cannabis with a street value of N15.1bn (about $479m) was destroyed in various plantations.
About 90 per cent of the haul, that is, cannabis weighing 1.5 million kilogrammes on two plantations were destroyed in Ise and Ogotun area of Ekiti State alone during the operation. The destruction of the plantations took 12 days to complete while hundreds of narcotics agents were involved in the raid tagged “Operation Weed Eater”.
Just few months after the two plantations were destroyed in the state, the NDLEA destroyed another 400-hectare cannabis farm in the state.
Cannabis seizures and destruction of plantations since then have been equally massive.
Less than one year ago, the NDLEA conducted another raid in Ogotun, Ekiti State, where over 4,000 hectares of cannabis were destroyed with 100 large sacks of the weed already harvested.
“The 4,000 hectares of the farm land located about 25kms from the town was cultivated in the midst of a thick forest, aside from the over 100 bags of harvested cannabis that were destroyed, the officers also kept hold of some growing ones,” NDLEA spokesperson, Mitchell Ofoyeju, said.
“It is unfortunate that the most lucrative business in Ekiti is the business of Igbo (Indian hemp,” human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), himself an indigene of the state, said few weeks ago.
Generation left with mere tales of glory days
Unfortunately, in the face of this grim reality, local rice farmers of the days of yore are left with mere tales of how beautiful things used to be for them until government support stopped.
In Igbemo-Ekiti, Mr. Sunday Fatuase, who used to cultivate four hectares of rice every year, now works at the Irepodun Local Government secretariat as a guard.
“All we need is government help. If we are able to purchase fertilisers at reduced rates or even get loans and machines to clear our lands, I will not think twice before going back to the farm. But it will be suicidal to go back now. Even my children will accuse me of trying to kill myself with work,” he said.
A septuagenarian, Pa Kehinde Adejuyigbe, explained that in his days, he planted six acres of rice every year and sent all his children to the university solely on rice revenue.
“Things started becoming worse for us 20 years ago, there was no government support. We were doing everything by ourselves and fertiliser was becoming too expensive. I finally stopped cultivating rice 15 years ago,” he said.
The fact that the only kind of job youths in Igbemo-Ekiti want to engage in is local government work was again echoed by a rice mill operator, Segun Oriola.
In Oriola’s mill, there were a few sacks of rice that had not been milled. According to him, many years ago, a rice mill in Igbemo was usually filled to the rafters.
“At that time, being a rice miller alone paid well because there was so much to do. But not anymore,” he said.
Unfortunately, the situation is the same in many parts of Ekiti State, where the most exciting activities for youths participation are political parties. However, for many of them who cannot find work in the local government secretariats, Indian hemp cultivation provides an easy way out.
Dying cultivation of rice in the face of massive consumption
The irony of the dying cultivation of rice in Igbemo-Ekiti is the fact that it remains the highest consumed food in Nigeria. The country is also the second highest importer of rice globally after China.
Statistics from the Nigerian Ports Authorities show that N1.7tn (about $5.4bn) worth of rice was imported by Nigeria over the last 10 years. This is apart from the huge quantity smuggled through the land borders.
Recently, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, confirmed that Nigeria imports $6m worth of rice daily.
Despite the heavy importation of rice, the supply gap is still huge.
According to the Agriculture Promotion Policy (2016-2020) of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, supply of rice in the country currently stands at 2.3 million tonnes, while demand is 6.3 million tonnes.
Nigeria currently plans to ban importation of rice outright by 2017 to drive up local production.
Unfortunately, the huge revenue that should have accrued to local rice producers such as those at Igbemo-Ekiti is going into importation because of their lack of capacity.
In recognition of the huge potential for revenue generation in rice cultivation, some states such as Lagos and Kebbi are teaming up for large scale production of what they have labelled ‘Lake Rice’, which will hit the market in a few weeks.
In October, the Anambra State Government said it had reached the target of 210,000 tonnes in its rice production.
Even individuals such as entrepreneur, 35-year-old Rotimi Williams, are cashing in on the huge potential in rice cultivation.
Williams currently owns the second largest rice farm in the country, a 45,000-hectare farm in Nasarawa providing jobs for 600 locals.
His investment further demonstrates the job opportunities which are lost in former rice hubs like Ekiti State as a result of the decline in rice cultivation.
For the traditional ruler of Igbemo-Ekiti, Oba Adewunmi Daramola, the efforts to resuscitate agriculture and most especially, rice cultivation in the area, had been more talk than action.
The Onigbemo of Igbemo said, “The government even came here few years ago and acquired land for large-scale rice cultivation but that was the last we heard of it. The plan then was that they would allocate the land to farmers who would cultivate it with government support.
“Most of the government efforts have been only on paper. We have the land and the rice grown here have been attested to be of a better quality. The farmers are ready but the problem is lack of mechanisation. It is unfortunate that politicians would rather distribute rice to the people rather than assist them to cultivate by themselves simply because they want people to continue to be dependent on them.”
Experts speak on way forward
The Nigerian Export Promotion Council had said Nigeria needs to scale up cocoa production in order to surpass Ivory Coast and Ghana in production. Ivory Coast produced about 1.3 million metric tonnes, while Ghana produced about 700,000 metric tonnes in 2015 compared with Nigeria’s 235,000.
But the Chief Operating Officer, Centre for Cocoa Development Initiative, Mr. Robo Adhuze, told our correspondent that this is not a miracle that can be “spoken” into existence.
He said nothing substantial could be achieved in the sector until the country puts in place a cocoa policy.
Adhuze said, “Issues concerning value chain development in the cocoa industry have been topics of discussion since 1964. They are still the same challenges facing the production of cocoa in 2016. Unfortunately, there is no policy for the cocoa industry in the country. The first step is to have a policy document that all stakeholders can sign on to.
“Past administrations like that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo made attempts to develop such policy but there have been no follow-up. If we have a cocoa policy, every other thing would fall in place. Today, there is no single entity in Nigeria that is solely in charge of cocoa and oversee its affairs whether in the private or public sector.”
Chairman of the Ondo State Agricultural Commodities Association, Mr. Akin Olotu, said large amounts of agricultural products like cocoa waste away in farm settlements in the state simply because there are no roads to bring them to the prospective markets.
“The government’s annual ritual of making grand pronouncements about the development of agriculture in the country has to stop. Government must open rural roads, think about renewable energy for the farm steads and train farmers and build their capacity,” he said.
The Chairman of NDLEA, Col. Muhammad Abdallah (retd.), explained that a concerted effort is needed to stop cannabis cultivation while farmers should be encouraged to cultivate food and economic crops.
He said the country risks devastating food crisis if the trend of cannabis cultivation is not addressed in the country.
“Stakeholders must strategise on how to increase food production and prevent criminal organisations from diverting arable farmland for cannabis cultivation. A situation where food and cash crops are paving way for cannabis plant portend danger and deserve urgent attention,” Abdallah said.
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