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Interesting article that highlights gaps that can be filled through innovation and entrepreneurship

Innovation gaps stall Nigeria’s livestock development


Experts say gaps in innovation in Nigeria’s agricultural sector are hurting livestock development which is leading to revenue and job losses in the country.
Key experts who spoke with BusinessDay stated that the livestock sub-sector is yet to receive appropriate recognition and most of the technologies in the sector are obsolete.
“We must be innovative in implementation and execution of agricultural programs, projects and activities,” said Tope Damola, chairman, Shonga Farms.
“lack of innovation is the reason why we cannot track our animals. We should turn the animal tracking to an industry,” Damola said.
He stressed that the renewed call for a return to agriculture by Nigerians should not mean a descent to primitive agriculture that is not technology driven.
According to him, an example of primitive agriculture is the movement of cattle and sheep through bushes, a practice that destroys crop farms and creates conflicts between herdsmen and farmers.
The attacks by rampaging herdsmen on farmlands have been tipped to stoke a food crisis in Africa’s most populous nation, if not addressed, experts say.
“The North-Central region has become a den of herdsmen and kidnappers,” said Dele Ogunlade, chief executive officer, Crest Agro Products.
“If the issue of herdsmen is not addressed then we should be ready for a food crisis because a lot of farmers are not farming large areas like before due to the high rate of insecurity in the region,” Ogunlade said.
The continuous onslaught by herdsmen has led to the destruction of agro raw materials and drop in output of major crops such as cassava, grains, orangaes, mangoes and other commodities that serves as food and inputs for manufacturers in the food and beverage industry.
Experts say innovation and technology-driven agriculture should be for an improved productivity through a more accessible veterinary services, better nutrition and modern husbandry.
“Within the confines of ranch, the animals can be sustained. You will be sure you can get feed and water for them, providing all these within the ranch. This will minimise the movement outside the ranch in search of water and feed, in the course of which destruction of farmlands and communal clashes occur,” said Chryss Onwuka, professor of ruminant animal nutrition and president of the Nigerian Society for Animal Production.
Olukayode Oyeleye, special adviser to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said at last year AGRA event that the country’s slow development in the livestock industry is as a result of the absence of innovation and technology in the sub-sector.
Livestock sub-sector grew by 1.76 percent in Q1 2017 from 1.23 percent in Q4 2016 and 0.76 percent in Q3 2016, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
According to the stakeholders, government should provide necessary infrastructure needed for the development of the sub-sector and regularly update the data on livestock production in the country, stating that inability to do these over the years have hindered the tracking of cattle’s in the country.
They also call on the government to conduct census on livestock as this would aid the growth of the industry and the agricultural sector at large.
“We should turn animal tracking into an industry. The infrastructure in the livestock industry is still very poor. Tracking animals also is a form of security,” Damola said who was ealier quoted.
“Data on investment is not exactly known. Deaths, births, losses to thefts, diseases distribution patterns and feeding sustainably rely on guesswork,” he said


http://www.businessdayonline.com/innova ... velopment/

I think the implications for the fall out of the farmers and headers clash is either under rated or misunderstood. Or maybe it's our usual way of ignoring important actions that will back to hunt us. The article is right, farmers no longer go far to farm preferring to farm near highways and settlements and the implications are reduced output. So we need to settle this heads men and farmers thing very quickly.

That's my worry. Also Cattle tagging will take some getting used to due to the relatively sophisticated supporting infrastructure.

How to address dairy deficit in Nigeria

Nigeria relies heavily on dairy imports to bridge the gap between local milk production and total milk consumption estimated to be 1.3 million tonnes with the government spending an estimated $1.3billion annually on importation of dairy products into the country.

According to National Agricultural Sample Survey, 2011, Nigeria as a country, is endowed with an estimated cattle population of 19.5 million, in addition to other livestock, making the country the highest livestock producer in the West African sub-region.

During the post-colonial period in Nigeria, both Federal Government and Regional Governments as part of their strategies to encourage the dairy industry development, established several dairy-processing plants across the country and by 1975 after successfully upgrading the first herd of indigenous cattle with imported Bos taurus specie, 69 cows were able to produce about 200, 000 litres of milk annually.

Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chairman of Dangote group, made an assertion that 98 per cent of all dairy products consumed in the country are imported. He disclosed this when students of the Executive MBA class of Lagos Business School visited the Dangote Petrochemical Refinery in October of 2016.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh while addressing an audience at the retreat on livestock and dairy development in Nigeria, in June 2016, called for the abandonment of the nomadic way of raising cattle in Nigeria, adding that steps were being taken to ensure quality and quantity of milk and beef.

According to the minister, the steps taken were establishment of ranches to be planted with imported high-quality improved tropical grass varieties, cattle improvement programme via artificial insemination, establishment of clusters of dairy farms to be equipped with collection facilities and capacity building for dairy farmers.

These assertions were, however, yet to be implemented.

Again, Ogbeh at a roundtable conference in Abuja, themed ‘Milky Way to Development’ said, Nigeria’s national dairy output per annum is 700, 000MT while the national demand is 1, 300MT annually, affirming that Nigeria is partnering with major national and international stakeholders in the sector to bridge the deficit thereby considerably reducing importation of milk by 2019.

But the President of the Commercial Dairy Ranchers Association of Nigeria (CODA RAN), an umbrella body for commercial dairy farmers in the country, Mal Muhammadu D. Abubakar said, the major challenges of keeping up with dairy production in Nigeria are lack of adequate energy, lack of cold chain infrastructure and lack of stocks with high milk yield.

In addition, Abubakar lamented that because sources of milk are scattered among the pastoralists, it is a great challenge bringing the milk together and organising them into an entity. He noted that lack of good rural/ feeder roads makes it difficult to connect to either pastoralists or other commercial farmers in the hinterlands.

Abubakar, who is also the MD/ CEO of L & Z Integrated Farms Limited, a dairy farm engaged in the entire value chain of dairy from production, processing to marketing outlined that some countries provided a level playing ground to protect their local dairy farmers by introducing higher tariffs on imported dairy products into such countries, thereby allowing the local products to compete favourably with such imported products.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, President of CODA RAN, decried that tariff on dairy products importation is about 10 per cent and plans are underway to cut it to five per cent while other countries’ tariff is as high as 60 per cent.

He explained that the European dairy farmers especially receive various types of support from their governments like subsidy for the cows, export grants and also support for acreage kept for pasture production for the animals.

“Collectively, these supports makes their milk to be very cheap and when they import to Nigeria where all these are non-existent, it makes our own dairy to be excessively expensive. So even in our clime we can’t compete with these farmers that are abroad,” he lamented.

He pointed out that Nigeria has to exercise caution in signing of treaties with international communities and also involve the necessary stakeholders before going into such agreements.

“What do we export to those countries. So how will this trade liberalisation benefit us? But they import dairy products worth $1.3billion into our country annually.”

“A case that comes to my mind easily is the European Partnership Agreement (EPA) that is currently being circulated and considered for signing which will at the end of the day make our market easily penetrable as against we trying to get into their market,” he decried.

He, therefore, advised the government to engage the private sector, and turnaround it policy in order to make milk profitable in Nigeria, adding that once it is profitable, Nigerians have the capacity to mop up excess milk.

Similarly, Mr Ilan Bones, Manager of Milky-way Farm in Bokkos, Plateau State, affirmed that most dairy farms in Nigeria use a percentage of imported powdered milk to make dairy products because of the poor quality of fresh milk they get from herdsmen.

He asserted that shortage of dairy farms in Nigeria and seasonality of fresh milk, are the major limiting factors to Nigeria’s dairy industry development.

In addition, Bones noted that using hands by herdsmen to milk cows significantly affects the quality of the milk, stating further that the time it takes to deliver the milk also affects its quality which becomes a problem for milk processors.

Mr Bones advised government to organise herdsmen into small farms and ensure milk collection is done automatically and most importantly hygienically, and also provide cooling devices to enable smooth supply of dairy factories with quality milk.

In another vein, Mr Ishaya U. Gadzama, who is a breeder/ nutritionist for the Dairy Research Programme of National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI), Shika, Zaria confirmed that the institute’s ‘Friesian Bunajis’ can produce up to 10litres of milk per day.

NAPRI is conferred with the mandate for genetic and reproductive improvements of livestock species, including cattle, sheep and goats, among others.

Gadzama said this breeds of cow are artificially inseminated at nearly two years of age and calves give birth at three years of age depending on their body weight.

https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/busi ... 10812.html