…embarks on 4 major programmes on food production 

By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – AS Nigerians hope to see food prices drop drastically, the Executive Secretary, National Agricultural Land Development Authority, NALDA, Cornelius Adebayo, Tuesday, explained clustering farmers would bring greater productivity to boost food security.

Adebayo stated this while he received journalists under the auspices of Agricultural Correspondents Association of Nigeria, ACAN, at the NALDA headquarters in Abuja.

He said the new NALDA is already making impact in the nation’s food system as the organisation has rolled out four major programmes to galvanize food production across the country; Renewed Hope Mega Farm Estates; Renewed Hope Restoration Project; Aqua Hope Project; and The Green Hope.

According to him, the farmers are positioned to produce for Nigerians, make money for themselves, and NALDA also generate revenue from the facilities and enabling environment provided for them.

He said: “The new NALDA, we are looking for as much as possible where we can acquire, have more equipment so we can reach out to more places and do more of this support initiatives.

“We are here for every serious farming group, cooperative, companies, sub-national government levels. You can see that at our event, we have people from local government chairman to commissioners of agri-farm estates. It is because we are reaching out to everybody. Let us see where we can join, work together to achieve this. You can’t do it in isolation. 

“We realized that if we clusterize our farmers, and put them in one place, and protect them, and provide the input where they are, it reduces one of our logistic problems. Monitoring and evaluation too, training, and also helps with securing them.

“And we trench around the farms, we have what we call trenching now, we are doing it in our farming community already. We are digging trenches around the farms, four-feet-by-four- feet. So it is impossible for unwanted parties to come into the farm, and you can control who comes in, who goes out.

“In terms of input diversion, you can also control it because when the farmers are within that cluster, you don’t have the issue of government giving input and somebody going outside to sell it because you know you are within that space. Extension workers have access to you, so the agronomy is top-notch. Mechanization operators have access, if it is government providing mechanization directly to NALDA or any agency, if it is your Hello Tractor, your tractor on the go, partners, private because when we set up these centres, we can now say, look, we are stretched, Hello Tractor, can you deploy 20 tractors to this centre? They know that there are 1,000 farmers in this place. There is nobody in the private sector that provides that service that would not go and put a mechanization centre there. 

“So our job as NALDA is not to cultivate, my job is not to go and say, I want to cultivate 50 hectares of banana in your village. No. Government has no business doing direct business but what we want to do is to create that enabling environment to make private sector involvement come into the sector and to guarantee support for our smallholder farmers.”

He also said partnership arrangements are on already for farmers in the quest to de-risk the farm business and make it less burdensome for those who want to engage in it, therefore, NALDA’s concern is to ensure a conducive environment and to promote ease of doing business, whereby at the end of the day is a win-win situation for all parties.

“Now, while we use those farm settlements to settle our smallholder farmers, we are not oblivious of the fact that we need a lot of resources to do that. So we have gone into strategic partnerships with institutional investors. So you have the likes of people that are approaching us and saying, look, I have 5,000 hectares of land, 2,000 hectares of land, and I want to go into cocoa production because you need cocoa, cashew, sesame, you need these crops to earn this foreign earning. Whatever magic they are performing in the oil sector, we can’t beat it in agriculture but we just don’t see ourselves in that light. 

“People for long see agriculture as intervention. Agriculture is no intervention, agriculture is a business, and it is a profitable one at that, and we have to treat it with that respect. So we need to look at people that have the funds and have the interest and have the know-how that say, look, I want to do 2,000 hectares of palm. I want to do 5,000 hectares of cocoa. But it’s going to cost me X billions of Naira because it’s too expensive to clear land and prepare land.

“We want to help you de-risk and reduce your exposure. What do we do? We give you infrastructure. We give you enabling environment. Why don’t you come in and clear for you? In exchange for our clearing, over so-so-so years, you give us X back. So you don’t have to worry about looking for the loan to clear because government can say, look, now that we provide the infrastructure for that place, you plant. When you sell, that gives us sustainability to earn something in return to be able to use on the smallholder farmers. So I don’t always have to beg for budget. I don’t always have to. That puts me in a good position to be able to do and perform my functions without looking for where to source the funds from”, he added.