Yemisi Izuora
The Croplife Nigeria, has warned that the federal government’s aspiration to achieve food security may be jeopardized following escalating roadblocks erected by government agencies at the country’s entry points which has affected effective supply and distribution of biopesticides to support food production.
The group warns that pests has always remained one major threat looming over agriculture industry potentially ruining a harvest and that farmers are obliged to take action against pests.
Speaking on the looming threat, president of Croplife Nigeria, Mahmood Tauhid while addressing the media in Lagos Thursday said government agencies operating at the seaports have posed serious challenges to efforts of importing approved pesticides to help farmers boost harvests.
Tauhid said previously the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC was regulating the agrochemical subsector of the industry but in the last two year more agencies like the Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON and others have joined the league of those creating unnecessary bottlenecks to importation of the products, thus creating scarcity and encouraging adulteration.
The president observed that over the past three decades, Nigerian government had initiated a plethora of policies and programmes which were aimed at restoring agricultural sector to its pride of place in the economy.
However various efforts at promoting investment and export diversification in the agricultural sector have not yielded appreciable dividend, and that enormous investment and export diversification potentials for generating higher growth in the economy have remained unlocked and unexploited in the agriculture due to a host of constraining factors that must be removed.
Tauhid said the Association is not against regulation but government should endeavor to remove the identified bottlenecks so as to fast track the attainment of poverty reduction and rapid economic development in the country.
He said government should strive to implement policy actions by removing the constraints that include improvement in downstream commodity activities, environmental management, and efficiency in agricultural spending by investing heavily in rural infrastructure and such investment must ensure development of infrastructure in the rural area.
He observed that despite global acceptance and utilization, biopesticide penetration remains low, particularly in developing agrarian countries like Nigeria and this is mostly due to widely reported issues such as the high cost, poor efficacy, and inconsistent field performance associated with biopesticide utilization.
In addition, lack of knowledge, cohesive advocacy, and other factors have conspired to limit biopesticide use in Nigeria.
The Association, he noted has partnered relevant research institutes in training farmers on use of pesticides and to attract more youth into the industry with the goal of fostering sustainable crop production and environmentally sustainable agriculture in Nigeria through pest control and disease management.
Oriental News Nigeria reports that it has been estimated that about 125,000 – 130,000 metric tons of pesticides are applied every year in Nigeria.
Tauhid, regretted that inspite of enormous efforts by the government to reposition agriculture to its prime of place of providing food for the human consumption and raw materials for industrial needs, as well as generating foreign exchange earnings, and employment for the population, the rate of capacity utilization by agro-allied industry in the country has been declining partly because of irregular and inadequate supply of raw materials. Linkage of agricultural sector to the industry has been very weak and it is imperative for the country to maintain equilibrium between raw materials requirements of industries, human consumption needs and capacity of agriculture to supply the raw materials.
He stressed that agricultural commercialization and investment are the key strategies for promoting accelerated modernization, sustainable growth and development and, hence, poverty reduction in the sector and to attract investment into agriculture, it is imperative that those constraints inhibiting the performance of the sector are first identified with a view to unlocking them and creating a conducive investment climate in the sector.
According to him, the Croplife annual investment profile is in the region of $600 million, but the investment is being threatened by activities of government agencies. He said efforts are being made to establish Plants to formulate products in-country but there is the need for government to encourage these investments.
The development challenges of Nigeria’s agriculture are, therefore, those of properly identifying and classifying the growth and development constraints of the sector, unlocking them and then evolving appropriate strategies for promoting accelerated commercialization and investment in the sector such that, in the final analysis, agriculture will become one of the most important growth points in the economy, he added.
He said Croplife has supported government plan to test for Aflatoxins contamination, moisture content and some microbiology parameters necessary for agricultural produce to be exported out of the country as part of measures to reduce the rejection rate of products exported from Nigeria to other countries.
It would be recalled that the European Union had put a ban on the exportation of some Nigerian agricultural products due to non-compliance with standards.
The products include beans, sesame seeds, melon seeds, dried fish and meat, peanut chips and palm oil, but Tauhid explained that its training engagement with rural farmers will help to address pesticides applications.