Some have argued that Nigerian farmers do not have the capacity to meet the consumption demands of the country, how does this appear to you?
All around this country, there are hundreds of abandoned farms, so when people say we cannot meet the consumption demand, I tell them it is not true. Most of the farms in this country are either working in low capacity or have closed down. Almost everyone has an uncle or aunt who used to do poultry, so we need to revive those farms and it is exactly what we are trying to do. There are three kinds of contract farmers, one in which you just buy your products, second in which we supply some of your inputs and buy your products, third in which we give you all your inputs and we buy your products. Right now, to be able to do number two and three, we need the financial sector to actually be prepared to take some risks. Right now, we have not been able to get any bank in Nigeria to be able to provide what is like an anchor borrowers’ scheme. The idea would be that all these abandoned farmers should come back into production, imagine the number of people that it would affect.
Have you reached out to any of the specialised banks for funding?
Bank of Industry will say they do not fund primary agriculture. Bank of Agriculture is currently undergoing some restructuring- they have not been active in agriculture. We are hoping that in the post-reorganisation, there would be some improvements; there would be a change of this policy. We are in discussion with Nigeria Incentive based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) on an anchor borrowers’ scheme which is between NISRAL and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). If that takes off in collaboration with some of the commercial banks, it should be able to trigger the anchor borrowers’ scheme success and long term growth in the poultry industry, especially the chicken aspect. With that combination, what will happen is that a company like ours will be an anchor. NISRAL will provide a guarantee of the products, CBN will provide the funds, we will supply the products to the farmers; the farmers will groom the birds, mature them and sell the finished products back to us. We will process and sell through our value chain. This is not reinventing the wheel, this is the model that is currently working everywhere in the world where you find successful farmers.
What is the funding gap in the in Nigerian poultry industry?
The industry for chicken is a turnover of N600 million. If we divide that into six cycles a year because broilers will have about five to six cycles a year, we will be looking at a funding gap of about N100 million for broiler which will be the amount of money required to fund one cycle and we say that there are about five or six cycles in a year. We believe that if N100 billion is pumped into the industry, it will yield a global turnover of over a trillion naira.
Any impact of the army worm infestation of corn farms on the poultry business?
The new harvest for maize is not yet out fully. We are expecting it to have huge impact. The size of the impact we do not know yet. The minister of Agriculture said that they are working to contain it, I pray they do because maize is a major problem we have. The price of maize has increased from about N50,000 to N55,000 at the beginning of the season to N110,000 per ton but the price of egg and chicken have remained relatively the same. What it means is that farmers are actually not making money at this time.
What is the level of consumption of maize by the poultry industry?
Our total consumption of maize as a country is about three million tons. The total production of maize in Nigeria is about nine million tons, so we consume between 20 and 30 per cent of the total maize produced in this country. In Nigeria, the statisticians will say an average farming families for maize produces two tons per hectare and the farm has two hectares, so what are we saying, a family producing maize produces four tons of maize. If a family is producing four tons of maize and we are consuming two to three million tons, how many families do we need to produce maize? Out of the four tons they are producing, they are consuming half at home, so we need about a million families to produce maize that is used by the poultry industry. How long will it be for Nigeria to be self-sufficient in poultry products and what can be done to speed up this process?
If we are given the necessary support of funding and raw materials, this industry will be able to provide Nigeria’s poultry needs in a two year period. If there is no support, then maybe two years will become four years. We farmers have managed to stay alive through hard work and commitment, sorrow, tears and blood. We will continue to make that effort. We are working very, very hard to increase capacity across the country. We are replicating our natnupreneur scheme in the different parts of the country over the next three months. We are working very hard, twice as hard as we were working before to be able to bridge the gap. One of the initiatives is the natnupreneur scheme that we have started, on which we are trying to galvanise abandoned farms. We are trying to encourage farmers who were underutilizing their capacity to further improve their capacity. We are trying to encourage farmers who are fully utilizing their capacity to expand, thereby increasing the quantum of chicken available, to be able to bridge that gap.
What is the target of your company in meeting Nigeria’s poultry needs?
We are targeting 10 per cent of the total production over the next five years. We are trying to create a scenario where different categories of people will get to work in the poultry industry. One of the initiatives we have launched is called the “natnupreneur” scheme in which we empower a wide range of entrepreneur farmers. We provide them technical training, business training and then we off take the products. Most of the problems farmers have had over the years is that somebody should buy the products even when they are off season. Now we are setting up a scheme, where they offload the products. As long as they sign an MoU with us, we give them the chicks at a discount. That helps them grow their businesses faster. We are also trying to empower young new entrepreneurs in selling the products, chicken, sausages and all that. What they need is a freezer, stock, and they will be able to pay themselves a salary of N50,000 a month and there’s a good margin on each of those products. We have the third one for rural which we are working on now for the local farmers in the village. Currently on the rural scheme we have about 250 farmers. On our seller scheme, we only have about 150 to 200 people then we have registrations going to 2000 because there’s a selection process for anybody that applies. It is the selection process that helps. We are not just giving you products to sell; we are training you in business management, customer service which is really why we are anchoring it because we want to ensure that they really become business people. At the end of the day what we expect is they we have 1,000 sellers, 1500 farmers.
Source: Leadership News Paper
http://leadership.ng/business/537607/nigeria-can-self-sufficient-poultry-production-pan-president
No comments:
Post a Comment