By Ebele Orakpo

There is indeed hope for Nigeria in the area of agriculture and food security, one of President Goodluck Jonathan’s five-point agenda; thanks to the efforts of an agricultural scientist, Dr Lanre Talabi, the Chief Executive Officer of Talon Nigeria Limited, an agro-based research and development company involved mainly in bringing cost-effective, sustainable and appropriate technology and management know-how to bear upon food, agriculture, fisheries and the environment in Nigeria.

The President had told the nation at inauguration that his administration will pay special attention to the agricultural sector, to enable it play its role of ensuring food security. In a recent chat with Vanguard in Lagos, Dr. Talabi stated that if given the support, Talon can produce enough fish for Nigeria. Excerpts

According to Dr. Lanre Talabi who graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1969: “I hold a PhD in Biochemistry of Fish and Fish Oils from Aberdeen University and University of Ife,  post-doctoral certificate from Cambridge-MIT and also certificate in Storage technology from a federal university in Denmark. So over all, I have attended five universities, both in Nigeria and Europe, all within the area of food, agriculture, fisheries and environment and I enjoy doing my work in agriculture.”

Talabi said that setting up the farm was part of setting up Talon Nigeria Limited. “It was set up as a research centre. It is like a medical doctor who has a hospital. We do mostly research and development. We try new things and if they work, we commercialise them, if they don’t work, that is our loss, we continue to research until we get it right. My wife has a degree in agriculture from the University of Ibadan. I finished in 1969 and she finished in 1972. My father also studied agriculture and forestry and ended up with degrees in physics and chemistry. So we are an agricultural family. Right now, we have over 20 square miles of land in my home town and very soon, we will start something there.”

The outfit which is worth N860 million, has about 20 permanent staff and 40 regular consultants and associates in its employ, provides services such as project coordination, mass data processing, specialist information, technology procurement etc.

As a result of the cultural diversity of its permanent staff and associates, Talon has access to several well-equipped laboratories (abroad and local) to provide a wide range of analytical services on water, food and soil. Talon’s multi-disciplinary approach to projects and its 50-hectare Research and Development farm at Omilende in Ogun State enable it to provide appropriate solutions to problems in Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment.

The consummate agricultural scientist stated that he has been running his farm situated at Ilaro, near Abeokuta more as an experimental station since retiring from the civil service as a deputy director in technology research. “I see the farm as a big asset for myself, family and the nation. The kinds of things we do on the farm, nobody else does it. We are not just into fishery (smoked catfish and tilapia, frozen catfish fillets, catfish fingerlings and juveniles (Pangasius, Clarias and Tilapia), but we are also into crops like cashew, exotic vegetables like radish, beet root, basil, cayenne pepper, lettuce, tomatoes, sweet corn, sunflower seeds and oil, oil palm seedlings, okra and many other things.”

Speaking on the problems they face, he named funds and failure in research as the most common problems. “Failure of a research project is a setback. You want to achieve an objective and you fail, you try again. I must say that our main problem as agricultural scientists in this country is funding. I cannot understand why government is still allowing the banks to operate.  I find the banks in Nigeria not living up to their billing. Government has given them so much leeway to do what they like,” he said, accusing the banks of just being interested in collecting money and making things easy for themselves and difficult for others.  He wonders why an average young person finds it very profitable selling naira notes and asked whether the banks will sincerely claim to be ignorant of that?

“They are not giving loans to the real sector; they are just using the money for their own comfort. The solution is to do what the Indian government did with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD),” he said.  “We just need financial institutions like finance houses and community banks. These are the ones we should be dealing with. We should not be dealing with commercial banks at all. They have failed us. They are the ones causing inflation,” he stated

On their clients, Talabi said: “Everybody is our client. Instead of importing fish, we can produce fish for the entire nation, let them try us. If I am given a small body of water, I can raise eight tons of fish (given the techniques we have developed like the cage culture. It takes four months for fish to mature.

Lamenting the diminishing public sector contribution and investment in the agricultural sector, Dr Talabi who is billed to deliver a lecture in Sweden in August on Chemistry of lake water in Nigeria, said there is need to encourage private and public sector participation in Nigeria’s agriculture and this led to the establishment of the Talon Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (TISA). The school is designed for all stakeholders in the agricultural sector including policy makers, farmers, government officials, graduates and investors in agriculture, aquaculture and environmental management.

Talabi said that the students will benefit from international certifications from the Agribusiness Development Corporation in association with the College for Sustainable Agriculture and numerous other reputable South African training & technology partners.