By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA-AS agriculture becomes the centre of attraction for diversifying Nigeria’s economy from oil and gas, an agricultural expert who is the Country Representative of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, Dr Hakeem Ajeigbe, said, groundnut pyramids are to be in the factories to maximally benefit farms instead of mere display.

Ajeigbe speaking with Vanguard said the prospects of groundnut cultivation, processing and packing are high and attractive if the necessary things are put in place ranging from seeds, land and good agronomic practices.

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Interestingly, Nigeria ranks as the largest producer of groundnuts in Sub-Saharan Africa, and third largest producer of the commodity in the world.

It serves as an important ingredient for African broths, butter, confectioneries, cosmetics and personal care products.

Some of the health benefits of groundnuts are enormous, and experts say it is a commodity of the future in Nigeria.

He said: “The groundnut sector is not as easy as the rice. The reason is groundnut itself is a fairly low yielding crop compared to rice.

“I mean, a good one will give you about 2.5 tonnes while good rice will give you a minimum of five tonnes going and get six tonnes and  that is number one, number two, in the days of the groundnut pyramid, we were not processing, we were just growing the harvest put it in one place and everything is shipped. I don’t pray for that kind of pyramid.

“Our groundnut pyramid should now happen in the companies in the in the industries or in the factories where they do a lot of processing because we must add value. Value addition is all about processing is all about value addition and then job creation.

 “So if we just plant the groundnut, put it in one pyramid and then we export everything and we are talking about job creation how do we create the job? So if we sell it now to our companies here and they do processing they will employ our youths, so that is where the thing is.
“So now when you compare now and in the 70s, when we had the pyramids, there were no processors. There are a lot of processors now processing of groundnut into groundnut oil, and that’s why you don’t have these pyramids. So they don’t put them in one place.

“But there has been a lot of advancement and increase in the yield and the overall production and productivity of groundnut. We now also produce groundnut in the dry season. I mean, there are in some states they produce groundnut three times in a year, and very good yield.”

Speaking on the issue of improving the yield during harvest he (Ajeigbe) said ICRISAT currently is working on new varieties to boost farmers’ productivity.
“We are basically doing three things; one, is getting new varieties. And one of the things that actually also disrupt groundnut production in the late 70s and early 80s was drought. We now have most of our varieties that we are releasing the past 10 years are drought tolerant.

“There was the other issue of rosettes diseases, which also wiped out now all of these resistant varieties are also rosette resistant varieties, and that is one of the reasons farmers can also grow in the dry season because these varieties are rosettes resistant.

“Now unlike cowpea, we don’t spray groundnut so because they are resistant to all of those things that is why we also brought agronomic practices that will increase yield”, he said.

Speaking on how to surmount farmers’ access to quality seeds from ICRISAT, he said, “Now the big challenge is getting these seeds available to farmers and we are working with the National Agricultural Seed Council to promote Community Seed Producers Scheme so that farmers in those community can have a quality seed. These are what we are doing.”
However, according to him, “There is still room for improvement. I am not satisfied with the level of farmers’ productivity. But the truth is when you compare to say five years ago, there has been a 20 per cent increase in yield and it will continue is not as dramatic as the cereal because the legumes are lower yielding compared to wheat, rice, millet, and other cereals.

“If we can increase the adoption of varieties, then the overall yield will be increased on the average, and that is what we are working on.

“I can tell you one thing that it appears we’re a net importer of groundnut from net exporter, it is embarrassing, but this is the reality. But what it means we can double our groundnut production.

“We can easily get appreciable tonnes, we can easily achieve it with the new varieties of seeds.”