The federal government says it will give N2m to all graduating NYSC members who want to start an agricultural venture.
Now this beats me and it is good to examine this strange policy. It shows a mindset in our fundamental conception of agriculture at the federal level and from experience, I see that it reflects the assumptions at all levels of government. As such, it is worth sitting down to address.
Number 1, agriculture needs planning. It is strange the way we just wake up one day and decide to ‘go into agriculture’ without the fairest knowledge of the science and the business not what we want to do.
One of our states once decided they wanted a dairy programme and off they went importing Holsteins from a temperate region – 600 heifers I think – plus diary equipment worth millions of dollars. The animals got into our torrid climate and wouldn’t as much as eat.
The anorexia wore them thin to death of course. Each of those animals is worth over 2000 dollars – thus went billions of naira down the drain. Of course you cannot raise Holsteins in tropical Africa except you have elaborate climate control means.
The experiment of crossing Holsteins and New Jerseys (a brown temperate climate milk cow) with tropical animals to produce adapted high milk yield offsprings has been on for about 120 years in northern Australia, which is a tropical region, and have ended in failure or just a little gain.
Had that state gone to Shika (around Zaria where you have ample research work already done at the federal cattle research facility there) on these things, that misadventure would not have taken place. . .
Now, what research has the federal government done on the implications of unleashing maybe 10,000 venture farmers? What type of agriculture do they want to do? Plant corn, raise birds, raise fishes – clarias or tilapia, or salt water aquaculture? Any plan for storage so there won’t be a glut or forced sales of the farmers market? Any plan for processing?
I have decided to go into the more obvious issues around this, leaving the fundamentals for later. The fundamentals are even more serious:
When did those ex corps members become farmers?
What do they know about farming?
Who is providing them with land?
Which lab is ruining their soil tests?
Which agency or university is responsible for extension services to them and where is the demonstration farm of such agencies and universities?
What about biosecurity because Swine Fever or Coccidiosis can strike along with Birds Flu – without a warming?
How are they going to hedge against drought since we practice mostly rainfed agriculture?
Who is their insurer?
Any equipment. Who is training them on the use?
Assuming they all succeed and reap a hundred fold, any preparation to receive the glut so these farmers can remain in business or they’re going to be left to be forced to sell cheap?
I know the answers to all these things within our national context and that answer is simply this: Millions of farmers have been doing this business for the hundreds of years that we have been here without any consultant, insurance, science and equipment
These are even educated people and they’ll do just fine!
That’s how we reason our agriculture in broad terms and this mindset informs our policies. It is the reason you have a government waking up all of a sudden and saying it wants to dole out N2m apiece to agricultural greenhorns.
Are the local farmers doing well? Find the answer in what percentage of his income the minimum wage earner spends on food monthly – that tells you how fine our farmers are doing, how efficient and how productive. Next, go and look at the living standards of those farmers and see how much you would want your life to be like theirs. It’s that simple.
Number 2, Agriculture does not work with crowds, it works with equipment.
If you have a poultry, for example, the less people make co tact with those birds the better. That’s why poultries run by robots produce healthier birds and better profits.
Let’s look at it conceptually and build a model. You have 20,000 graduates who want to farm. Let’s divide them into two groups of 10,000 each.
Group 1 is given N2m ea which comes to N20,000,000,000.00 (N20 billion). They are further split into two groups of 5000 ea with each group doing crop farming and the other raising animals. You find 2ha for each of the crop farmers – that’s 10,000 ha (10kilometers X 10 kilometers).
Each has his plot demarcated and the 5000 toil on this mixed farm planing all sorts from vegetables to biennials like yam. They can’t use much of equipment for financial limitations. In any case, by dint of hard work they pull through like their fathers have always had to. They learn on the job, they reap a bountiful, best-case-scenario harvest.
The second group of 10,000 have their N20 billion. I look at them and say they are way too many! In any case, I run a test for them and pick gifted engineers from among them, agriculture graduates, accountants, biochemists and molecular biologists. They come to just 1,500. That’s about all I really need, honestly. I take 500 more as interns all the same. I have 8,000 in a cooler.
First I select my farming hands of about 100 and send them for training in equipment handling. (A farmer is a practical person who knows how to do a whole lot of things on the farm and also has a vast knowledge base. A typical farmer has such knowledge base you will think he’s crazy).
I send them for training on pesticide handling and I give them courses (just 2 weeks since they have a background) on toxicology of herbicides and pesticides. They get the picture easily because of their background in biological sciences. They understand the impact of persistent chemicals, management of ecosystems, the need for biodiversity and so forth.
I split up our 30,000 ha into a few parts: 13,000 for rice because that’s a staple and it has a huge, insatiable market. I take out 5,000 for Soy because it is such a versatile crop needed in both human and animal foods. Of the remaining 10,000 ha, I devote 8,000 to corn, 400 to horticulture, 500 to tree crops, 100 to research, 500 to yam (Discoroea sp.). Of the remaining 2,500 I will leave 400 mostly as a virgin forest for next season’s yam crop since we cannot grow yam on a spent land.
The remaining 2,100 will be for buildings and recreation, infrastructures like diesel dump and gas lines, roads, Chalmers, kitchen, schools and a landing strip. Each of the operations will be led by two farmers hired from farms in SE Asia and we will retain hands-on consulting farmers as trainers. We will retain a molecular biologist, a biochemist or two, a geneticist who are at the level of visiting professors to lead our research efforts.
All the training and planing will fall inside half a billion naira, with good use of funds. I spluge N10 billion on pre-owned but first rate equipment: tractors of various categories, implements, attachments, repairs workshop, metal work shops (complete with CNC lathes for high capacity milling), laboratories etc. We will put our farms near a big river and acquire a mobile irrigation equipment. Note that with this level of equipment, the farm can increase its acreage ten fold next season after smoothening it’s acts this Year 1 with the injection not very little or no capital at all. The farm is deliberately overequipped for this Yr 1 operations.
I set up molecular biology and biochemistry labs along with a food processing lab with around N2 billion.
We now have 8,000 people not yet fixed and N7.5 billion unattached funds. Operations will consume about N2.5b, wages and salaries N1b.
The N4b we have left will be split in half. N2b will be kept as shock funds. We wouldn’t need more than that since most of our investments are on annuals that will hit he market within three months and give us an inflow.
The 8000 graduates that are left will be managed this way. We will have 300 ha devoted for goat farming and some will be on that programme.
The goats are being sustained from waste from the millions of rice, corn and soy, so their fees budget is most zero. We can have 5,000 goats on 3,000,000 SQM of.land (300ha) if the animals aren’t grazing). That will take 100 people. I will pause there and set 900 out more as trainees in various aspects of work in the field, workshops, processing facilities and laboratories. 2,000 of the remaining 7,000 will be settled into intensive training in Information Tech. At that point we would have reached out limits for this phase and the rest will have to wait a year for our expansion plans to absorb them.
The point here should be obvious to all. In a hypothetical case, we will have to stretch ourselves to set aside welfare funds for the 5,000 that are still unengaged. We might have to borrow or underpay the engaged ones. Our burden will be lighter in just three months when we hit the market.
Which of these two models do you think is more applicable to graduates, more sustainable and intensive enough to absorb the intellectual energy of these graduates?
I think it’s high time we did things properly the way they deserve to be done.
NB: The above plan is a broad outline and must be replete with errors. The important things are the broad strokes and the big picture of it. No single human being can plan a 30,000-ha multi faceted agricultural programme from ground up on the fly like this.
- John Ogunlela from Western Dairies Limited, Osogbo , Osun State