…says new agric policy’ll address various challenges

By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA-THE Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, ARCN, has disclosed taking its offices and services to where rural farmers are for quality service delivery to achieve efficient, sustainable food production, availability, accessibility and affordability.

Speaking with Vanguard, the Executive Secretary, ES, ARCN, Prof Garba Sharubutu, explained that the reason ARCN is doing this is to ensure that farmers get the best of the service delivery by the Council at their doorstep, and also to ensure there is no gap between the Council and Nigerian farmers, hence no need for farmers to come to their offices for any information.

Sharubutu also spoke about the role the Council is going to play when the National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy, NATIP, is officially launched by the Federal Government.

He said: “The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Abubakar Mahood, has promised that a new agricultural policy is coming in order to ensure that our agricultural productivity is further enhanced.

“This is where government has continued to make sure policies are now be consistent rather than having policy somersault. We moved from Agricultural Transformation Agenda, ATA to Agricultural Promotion Policy, APP, and now we are trying to upgrade it to NATIP.

“NATIP is a policy that wants to bring in innovations and technology into the system, and that is where the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, ARCN, is going to play a prominent role.

“We are currently reviewing most of the innovations with hope of actually sending them out to the field so that our farmers will access them more easy.

“One may ask, what are we doing in order for them to access them, especially those who are at the rural areas? One, the government has directed that we must make sure we establish output centres in all the nooks and craines. So for each of our research institutes are now mandated to open and strengthen their extension units in the rural areas.

“Now, we are the ARCN we are giving them the facilities; televisions, radios, teaching materials, chairs and where it is possible we are building offices for them so that we will go back to the years of yester years where people visit one village or the other showing them how technologies are going to be adopted for improved productivity.

“The second thing we have done in order to ensure that this reaches the farmers is the radio and television we have established so that they will see it through the television practically and to listen through the radio more seriously so that all these innovations will be there.

“So right now it is not a question farmers not knowing where our research institutes are and where our outreach centres are but is a situation that we will now move to them rather than waiting in the office for farmers to come to us seeking information. This is exactly what we are trying to do.”

Explaining on what he referred to as ‘yester years’ the ARCN boss said, “What it means is extension in terms of taking in information. In the 1960s there were cinemas that these were being promoted that they moved from one village to the other organizing the farmers under traditional rulers and showed them how to weed, how to put fertilizer, apply other chemicals, store farm produce, and yester-yes means what was happening.

“Now, along the line we have taking extension to be technical but this government is saying let us go back to the rudiments, go back to the farmers and encourage so that they would do what used to be done.”

Meanwhile, he recalled that there used to be Farm Training Centres, farm resource centres where farmers where trained including demonstration farms, and there where video clips that were played for farmers to understand the new technologies and innovations.

Speaking on the ATA policy, he said he policy brought innovations while the APP brought about various strategies that were adopted and now the NATIP is going to introduce technology into what ATA formulated and APP in order to have a complete circle of what it takes to improve productivity.

On the duration of the policy, he said, “For NATIP we are predicting it should take a period of five years why because mechanization is capital intensive, and this law has just been promulgated so if we have to do that we have to give it a period of five years, and that is our recommendation, but is not for the Minister to actually look at it in the confines of his advisory team, but I can assure you within the five years you will see a lot of improvement if we move according to plan.

“Remember, this is the regime that has been able to release budgetary allocation 100 per cent. So whatever is being given to you in your envelop you receive 100 per cent.

“So, if it is true we have actually done our due diligence in terms of what we want to implement we should be seeing serious progress in what we are doing”, he said.

However, he stated that the funding is not enough but what is released is 100 per cent.

He also disclosed that, “Most of our research is foreign partner dependent and this is truth about it. So we depend on Forum for Agricultural Development in Africa, FADA, Agriculture Advancement Technology Foundation, AATF, and IITA, and may be the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research. These are organizations that assist us in carrying out research.

“Most of our researches are budget-dependent and you cannot do any good research when have a budget template you are following because researches take about five years so by the time you have money to do research and it comes December 31 the whole money is wiped out that does not encourage research. So what we have done is to collaborate with our donor partners so that they help us in conducting this research.”

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