NCC READY TO WORK WITH NEW AGRICULTURE SECRETARY.

Memphis, Tenn. -- The National Cotton Council congratulates former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue on his nomination for Secretary of Agriculture.

'Our industry looks forward to working with Governor Perdue as he leads USDA to help ensure a strong and viable agricultural and rural economy, including important actions necessary for the stabilization of the U.S. cotton industry,' NCC Chairman Shane Stephens said. 'It is encouraging to see a Secretary of Agriculture nominee with a strong production agriculture and agribusiness background and with experience, who comes from the second largest cotton-producing state.'

Stephens said the NCC stands ready to work with Governor Perdue and the senior leadership team that will be put in place at USDA to carry out the Department's important mission ‎and service to American agriculture.

As the U.S. cotton industry’s central organization, the NCC represents 25,000-plus industry members that include cotton farmers as well as ginners, cottonseed processors and merchandizers, merchants, cooperatives, warehousers, and textile manufacturers. Farms and businesses directly involved in the production, distribution and processing of cotton employ more than 230,000 workers and produce direct business revenue of more than $27 billion. SOURCE-NATIONAL COTTON COUNCIL OF AMERICA.

BIONOVELUS REVEALS NEW GREEN SOLUTION FOR FOOD SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL FAIR.

CEO and Chairman, Jean Ekobo, Reports Strong Interest at the International Exhibition

Phoenix -- With ever increasing interest internationally in organic agriculture, BioNovelus’ (PINKSHEETS: ONOV) booth at Agritrade Expo and Conference which took place March 23 and 24 in Guatemala commanded a lot of attention during the two-day fair.

BioNovelus CEO and President, Jean Ekobo, who led the company’s Central American delegation, was not surprised that interest in the company’s new organic sanitizer, CR-10 Disinfectant, was very high.

“After many months of research and testing, we chose Agritrade as the place to debut our new green disinfectant,” said Ekobo. “This is an exciting offspring of our organic CR-10 Biofungicide, already known for killing bacteria, fungi and spores rapidly, safely and effectively.”
This new green product, CR-10 Disinfectant, opens up a brand new market to BioNovelus. Management believes it is the solution to the growing demand for an organic sanitizer for postharvest agriculture.

Ekobo reports that CR-10 Disinfectant received a lot of interest from organic food providers at the Agritrade Expo. Potential customers included coffee producers, where CR-10 Biofungicide is still in the testing process, and interest came from other types of food producers — most of them shipping their produce to the US — including bananas, mangoes, baby carrots, baby zucchinis, tomatoes, green beans, and others.

In the wake of the recent foodborne diseases affecting companies such as Chipotle, Starbucks and Costco, food security has become a crucial priority both for the producers and food distributors.
Research has shown that CR-10 Disinfectant kills bacteria and viruses on contact, including E. coli, Salmonella, Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), Campylobacter, Norwalk virus (Norovirus), and others [Source: Dr. M. Oulé, Ph.D. – University of Saint Boniface, Canada] Management believes that it is safer, easier, and more effective to kill these sources of foodborne poisoning with BioNovelus’ food sanitizer than for food producers to use toxic chemicals such as bleach, alcohol, or quaternary ammonium based products.

Because CR-10 Disinfectant is organic, non-toxic, 100 percent biodegradable, and has a longer efficacy life span protection effect [Source: Dr. M. Oulé, Ph.D. – University of Saint Boniface, Canada], the company believes it is a real gamechanger in the food biosecurity space. BY BIONOVELUS INC.

KENTUCKY CATTLEMAN TESTIFIES BEFORE U.S HOUSE SMALL BUSINESS SUB COMMITTEE

Calls on Congress to Address Regulatory Reform, Repeal Federal Estate Tax

WASHINGTON -- Today, Tim White, a cattle producer from Lexington, Kentucky, testified before the House Small Business Committee’s Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy, and Trade regarding the future of America’s small family farms. In his testimony, White called on Congress to address the overly burdensome regulatory environment that is hampering rural America, repeal the federal estate tax, and to ensure the 2018 Farm Bill works for America’s cattle producers.

White said that as a small business owner, one of the biggest concerns he faces is over-regulation. EPA’s “waters of the United States” he said is a prime example of overregulation that would subject farmers and ranchers to unnecessary and costly permitting process.

“As a family-owned business, and knowing the detrimental impact this regulation could have on my operation, it is appalling that the agencies asserted that it would not have a significant economic impact on small businesses.”

White also called for the repeal of the federal estate tax, which is a leading cause of the breakup of multi-generational family farms.

“U.S. livestock producers understand and appreciate the role that taxes play in maintaining and improving our nation in many ways, however, they also believe that the most effective tax code is a fair one,” explained White. “For this reason, a full, immediate repeal of the estate tax must be a top priority as Congress considers comprehensive tax reform legislation.”

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 permanently extended the estate tax exemption level to $5 million per person/$10 million per couple. White said, “While we are grateful for the ATRA, the current state of our economy has left many agricultural producers guessing about their ability to plan for estate tax liabilities.”

White concluded his testimony discussing the 2018 Farm Bill and how it could positively or negatively affect many small family farms and ranches.

White stressed the farm bill must include a strong research title to ensure that the industry can remain as efficient and competitive as we can be in producing beef, a strong conservation title to protect programs like EQIP which have been very successful in helping producers do even more to protect our resources, as well as a robust animal health program including a FMD vaccine bank to respond to any potential outbreaks which would have a devastating impact on the nation’s beef industry.

“Estimates show that an FMD outbreak in the United States could cost our nation’s livestock producers billions of dollars in the first 12 months alone, “said White. “NCBA will be requesting support for the creation of a larger and more adequate FMD vaccine bank within the 2018 Farm Bill to include funding of $150 million dollars a year over five years. We feel that this FMD vaccine bank is vitally important to the beef industry as countries around the globe continue to grapple with this disease.”

Additionally, White said cattlemen oppose any attempt at government intervention in the marketplace, including mandatory Country-of-Origin labelling. BY NATIONAL CATTLEMENS BEEF ASSOCIATION.

TANZANIA ON HIGH ALERT AS BANANA DISEASE APPROACHES BORDER

Tanzania's agriculture researchers are on high alert in order to contain a deadly banana disease which they fear could cross their border with Mozambique. The disease is said to wipe-out 100 per cent of a plantation.

The disease, Fusarium wilt Tropical Race 4 (TR4) affecting Cavendish bananas, has already been reported in northern Mozambique -- near the country's southern border. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Plant Virologist, Dr James Legg said Fusarium -- Panama disease -- is more deadly than the TR1, currently ravaging banana plantations in Kagera.

To stop it reaching other areas, strict quarantine regulations are needed he says, whereby moving infected soil, plants or parts of plants and stopping banana production in affected farms, should be done.

According to a report by CGIAR, in northern Mozambique, it is estimated that affected farms has already lost more than 7.5 million US dollars due to TR4 infection. Also, over 500,000 plants -- more than 300 hectares -- have been affected by the pathogen since the outbreak, some three years ago. SOURCE- ALLAFRICA.COM

A CHALLENGING SEASON-BUT NOTHING WE HADNT SEEN BEFORE.

Last season saw a few ups and downs for the South African grape producers: Namibia with a good harvest, worries about not enough rain, then too much, the thread of hail just when the harvest is ready. How the different markets would be and a constant worry for South African exporters: the exchange rate.

"Different areas had different challenges," according to Pieter Karsten from the Karsten Group. "The Namibian season was looking strong and then just dropped off short of the expected finishing date which was positive for the growers on the Orange River in South Africa, but we also had quite a bit of production ourselves and were fairly early on the white which put the market under pressure. The late grapes from the Orange River had trouble with rain which lead to quality issues.

Production of the red varieties was good but prices were a bit under pressure in some market sectors, crimson did well though. Most of South Africa's grape growers are trialling new varieties, most of them late red ones, some of which are already in commercial volumes.

"We have a few of the new varieties in commercial volumes but you really can't tell how successful they are going to be from just a couple seasons, they need to be tried and tested over a few seasons," explains Pieter.  "Climatic conditions and market conditions differ each season, so the grapes have to go for a couple of years before you know which ones will be the best all round varieties. All in all it was a challenging season but nothing that we hadn't seen before."

South Africa's currency is always a bit volatile and for a while it strengthened making it more challenging for the exporters, but now the political situation has weakened it again. This good for exports at the moment but most exporters will agree that long term it is not a good thing. The whole political situation is unstable and Pieter reckons they are in for a rough ride as the fight for the leadership of the ANC continues.

Although there has been good rain in parts of the country, water levels in the Cape are critical, not just for agriculture but also for the populations of the towns where they are potentially running out of water. Cape Town needs to have a cold winter with snow on the mountains. Pieter is not aware of any crop losses on grapes at this point, but if this is another low rainfall winter it is going to be difficult. NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

SYNGENTA INVSTS IN SUSTAINABLE SEEDLING DISTRIBUTION IN ZAMBIA.

Smallholder farmers in Zambia will soon be able to access high-quality disease-free horticultural seedlings through a $1.8 million project by MRI Seed, a subsidiary of Syngenta Zambia, in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation programme.

“For Syngenta, smallholder farmers around the world and in Zambia are key to solving the growing gap between the supply and demand for affordable food,” said Mark Stokes, Head of Customer Marketing, Syngenta Zambia.

The project aims to build a sustainable seedling distribution model for hybrid vegetables; provide access to market information and linkages; train farmers in good agricultural practices and business management; and introduce new technologies to smallholder farmers.

It will test the commercial viability of innovative business models designed to enable the farmers to increase their agricultural output, and thus their profitability, safely and sustainably.

Syngenta will establish 20 seedling sites in 20 districts across Zambia, each owned and operated by an Entrepreneurial Young Plant Raiser (YPR).

The YPR will provide business and technical training; and facilitate market linkages for 12,000 smallholder farmers.

The project will focus on tomato and cabbage seedlings but Syngenta will conduct trials and testing on the commercial viability of kale (rape), cauliflower, broccoli, carrot and potato - crops with a high potential in Zambia.

The company will also help promote a pilot programme for YPR’s “Vegetable in a Bag” concept where a small portion of YPR seedlings will be sold in reusable packaging, with no ground soil and minimal water, making them suitable for urban and peri-urban use. SOURCE- SYNGENTA.

NIGERIA LOOSING BILLIONS ANNUALLY FROM CASHEW EXPORTS.

Nigeria has been losing billions annually from Cashew nut tree according to data from the National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN), due to lack of value addition and Nigeria’s inability to process cashew nuts in significant quantities for export, the country lost $1.4 billion in 2016.


According to the information, Nigeria exported a total of 160,000 metric tonnes of cashew valued at $300 million in 2016. This was far behind what farmers and exporters could have earned assuming there were processing factories that could process cashew nuts to export standards.


Recently, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, said Nigeria would start exporting processed cashew nuts by 2019, adding that currently a tonne of processed cashew nuts, when exported, is sold for $10,000 while the raw cashew nuts are sold at $1,200.


He explained: “It would be beneficial to process the nuts and export rather than exporting the nuts raw. So in the next two years, we will no longer export raw cashew nuts, but roast the cashew nuts for export. "SOURCE LEADERSHIP.NG.

TECHNOLOGY QUATERLY THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE.

If agriculture is to continue to feed the world, it needs to become more like manufacturing, says Geoffrey Carr. Fortunately, that is already beginning to happen.

TOM ROGERS is an almond farmer in Madera County, in California’s Central Valley. Almonds are delicious and nutritious. They are also lucrative. Californian farmers, who between them grow 80% of the world’s supply of these nuts, earn $11 billion from doing so. But almonds are thirsty. A calculation by a pair of Dutch researchers six years ago suggested that growing a single one of them consumes around a gallon of water. This is merely an American gallon of 3.8 litres, not an imperial one of 4.5 litres, but it is still a tidy amount of H2O. And water has to be paid for.

Technology, however, has come to Mr Rogers’s aid. His farm is wired up like a lab rat. Or, to be more accurate, it is wirelessed up. Moisture sensors planted throughout the nut groves keep track of what is going on in the soil. They send their results to a computer in the cloud (the network of servers that does an increasing amount of the world’s heavy-duty computing) to be crunched. The results are passed back to the farm’s irrigation system—a grid of drip tapes (hoses with holes punched in them) that are filled by pumps.

The system resembles the hydroponics used to grow vegetables in greenhouses. Every half-hour a carefully calibrated pulse of water based on the cloud’s calculations, and mixed with an appropriate dose of fertiliser if scheduled, is pushed through the tapes, delivering a precise sprinkling to each tree. The pulses alternate between one side of the tree trunk and the other, which experience has shown encourages water uptake. Before this system was in place, Mr Rogers would have irrigated his farm about once a week. With the new little-but-often technique, he uses 20% less water than he used to. That both saves money and brings kudos, for California has suffered a four-year-long drought and there is social and political, as well as financial, pressure to conserve water.

Mr Rogers’s farm, and similar ones that grow other high-value but thirsty crops like pistachios, walnuts and grapes, are at the leading edge of this type of precision agriculture, known as “smart farming”. But it is not only fruit and nut farmers who benefit from being precise. So-called row crops—the maize and soyabeans that cover much of America’s Midwest—are being teched up, too. Sowing, watering, fertilising and harvesting are all computer-controlled. Even the soil they grow in is monitored to within an inch of its life.

People will want to eat better than they do now

Farms, then, are becoming more like factories: tightly controlled operations for turning out reliable products, immune as far as possible from the vagaries of nature. Thanks to better understanding of DNA, the plants and animals raised on a farm are also tightly controlled. Precise genetic manipulation, known as “genome editing”, makes it possible to change a crop or stock animal’s genome down to the level of a single genetic “letter”. This technology, it is hoped, will be more acceptable to consumers than the shifting of whole genes between species that underpinned early genetic engineering, because it simply imitates the process of mutation on which crop breeding has always depended, but in a far more controllable way.

Understanding a crop’s DNA sequence also means that breeding itself can be made more precise. You do not need to grow a plant to maturity to find out whether it will have the characteristics you want. A quick look at its genome beforehand will tell you.

Such technological changes, in hardware, software and “liveware”, are reaching beyond field, orchard and byre. Fish farming will also get a boost from them. And indoor horticulture, already the most controlled and precise type of agriculture, is about to become yet more so.

In the short run, these improvements will boost farmers’ profits, by cutting costs and increasing yields, and should also benefit consumers (meaning everyone who eats food) in the form of lower prices. In the longer run, though, they may help provide the answer to an increasingly urgent question: how can the world be fed in future without putting irreparable strain on the Earth’s soils and oceans? Between now and 2050 the planet’s population is likely to rise to 9.7 billion, from 7.3 billion now. Those people will not only need to eat, they will want to eat better than people do now, because by then most are likely to have middling incomes, and many will be well off. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the United Nations’ agency charged with thinking about such matters, published a report in 2009 which suggested that by 2050 agricultural production will have to rise by 70% to meet projected demand. Since most land suitable for farming is already farmed, this growth must come from higher yields. Agriculture has undergone yield-enhancing shifts in the past, including mechanisation before the second world war and the introduction of new crop varieties and agricultural chemicals in the green revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet yields of important crops such as rice and wheat have now stopped rising in some intensively farmed parts of the world, a phenomenon called yield plateauing. The spread of existing best practice can no doubt bring yields elsewhere up to these plateaus. But to go beyond them will require improved technology.

This will be a challenge. Farmers are famously and sensibly sceptical of change, since the cost of getting things wrong (messing up an entire season’s harvest) is so high. Yet if precision farming and genomics play out as many hope they will, another such change is in the offing. In various guises, information technology is taking over agriculture.

ONE way to view farming is as a branch of matrix algebra. A farmer must constantly juggle a set of variables, such as the weather, his soil’s moisture levels and nutrient content, competition to his crops from weeds, threats to their health from pests and diseases, and the costs of taking action to deal with these things. If he does the algebra correctly, or if it is done on his behalf, he will optimise his yield and maximise his profit.

The job of smart farming, then, is twofold. One is to measure the variables going into the matrix as accurately as is cost-effective. The other is to relieve the farmer of as much of the burden of processing the matrix as he is comfortable with ceding to a machine.

An early example of cost-effective precision in farming was the decision made in 2001 by John Deere, the world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment, to fit its tractors and other mobile machines with global-positioning-system (GPS) sensors, so that they could be located to within a few centimetres anywhere on Earth. This made it possible to stop them either covering the same ground twice or missing out patches as they shuttled up and down fields, which had been a frequent problem. Dealing with this both reduced fuel bills (by as much as 40% in some cases) and improved the uniformity and effectiveness of things like fertiliser, herbicide and pesticide spraying.

Since then, other techniques have been added. High-density soil sampling, carried out every few years to track properties such as mineral content and porosity, can predict the fertility of different parts of a field. Accurate contour mapping helps indicate how water moves around. And detectors planted in the soil can monitor moisture levels at multiple depths. Some detectors are also able to indicate nutrient content and how it changes in response to the application of fertiliser.

All of this permits variable-rate seeding, meaning the density of plants grown can be tailored to local conditions. And that density itself is under precise control. John Deere’s equipment can plant individual seeds to within an accuracy of 3cm. Moreover, when a crop is harvested, the rate at which grains or beans flow into the harvester’s tank can be measured from moment to moment. That information, when combined with GPS data, creates a yield map that shows which bits of land were more or less productive—and thus how accurate the soil and sensor-based predictions were. This information can then be fed into the following season’s planting pattern.

Farmers also gather information by flying planes over their land. Airborne instruments are able to measure the amount of plant cover and to distinguish between crops and weeds. Using a technique called multispectral analysis, which looks at how strongly plants absorb or reflect different wavelengths of sunlight, they can discover which crops are flourishing and which not.
Sensors attached to moving machinery can even take measurements on the run. For example, multispectral sensors mounted on a tractor’s spraying booms can estimate the nitrogen needs of crops about to be sprayed, and adjust the dose accordingly. A modern farm, then, produces data aplenty. But they need interpreting, and for that, information technology is essential.

Platform tickets

Over the past few decades large corporations have grown up to supply the needs of commercial farming, especially in the Americas and Europe. Some are equipment-makers, such as John Deere. Others sell seeds or agricultural chemicals. These look like getting larger still. Dow and DuPont, two American giants, are planning to merge. Monsanto, another big American firm, is the subject of a takeover bid by Bayer, a German one. And Syngenta, a Swiss company, is being bid for by ChemChina, a Chinese one.

Business models are changing, too. These firms, no longer content merely to sell machinery, seed or chemicals, are all trying to develop matrix-crunching software platforms that will act as farm-management systems. These proprietary platforms will collect data from individual farms and process them in the cloud, allowing for the farm’s history, the known behaviour of individual crops strains and the local weather forecast. They will then make recommendations to the farmer, perhaps pointing him towards some of the firm’s other products.

But whereas making machinery, breeding new crops or manufacturing agrochemicals all have high barriers to entry, a data-based farm-management system can be put together by any businessman, even without a track record in agriculture. And many are having a go. For example, Trimble Navigation, based in Sunnyvale, at the southern end of Silicon Valley, reckons that as an established geographical-information company it is well placed to move into the smart-farming market, with a system called Connected Farms. It has bought in outside expertise in the shape of AGRI-TREND, a Canadian agricultural consultancy, which it acquired last year.

By contrast, Farmobile of Overland Park, Kansas, is a startup. It is aimed at those who value privacy, making a feature of not using clients’ data to sell other products, as many farm-management systems do. Farmers Business Network, of Davenport, Iowa, uses almost the opposite model, acting as a co-operative data pool. Data in the pool are anonymised, but everyone who joins is encouraged to add to the pool, and in turn gets to share what is there. The idea is that all participants will benefit from better solutions to the matrix.

Some firms focus on market niches. iTK, based in Montpellier, France, for example, specialises in grapes and has built mathematical models that describe the behaviour of all the main varieties. It is now expanding into California. Thanks to this proliferation of farm-management software, it is possible to put more and more data to good use if the sensors are available to provide them. And better, cheaper sensors, too, are on their way. Moisture sensors, for example, usually work by measuring either the conductivity or the capacitance of soil, but a firm called WaterBit, based in Santa Clara, California, is using a different technology which it says can do the job at a tenth of the price of the existing products. And a sensor sold by John Deere can spectroscopically measure the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium composition of liquid manure as it is being sprayed, permitting the spray rate to be adjusted in real time. This gets round the problem that liquid manure, though a good fertiliser, is not standardised, so is more difficult than commercial fertiliser to apply in the right quantities.

Things are changing in the air, too. In a recapitulation of the early days of manned flight, the makers of unmanned agricultural drones are testing a wide range of designs to find out which is best suited to the task of flying multispectral cameras over farms. Some firms, such as Agribotix in Boulder, Colorado, prefer quadcopters, a four-rotored modern design that has become the industry standard for small drones, though it has limited range and endurance. A popular alternative, the AgDrone, built by HoneyComb of Wilsonville, Oregon, is a single-engine flying wing that looks as if it has escaped from a 1950s air show. Another, the Lancaster 5, from PrecisionHawk of Raleigh, North Carolina, vaguely resembles a scale model of the eponymous second-world-war bomber. And the offering by Delair-Tech, based in Toulouse, France, sports the long, narrow wings of a glider to keep it aloft for long periods.
Even an endurance drone, though, may be pushed to survey a large estate in one go. For a synoptic view of their holding, therefore, some farmers turn to satellites. Planet Labs, a firm in San Francisco, provides such a service using devices called CubeSats, measuring a few centimetres across. It keeps a fleet of about 30 of these in orbit, which it refreshes as old ones die by putting new ones into space, piggybacking on commercial launches. Thanks to modern optics, even a satellite this small can be fitted with a multispectral camera, though it has a resolution per pixel of only 3.5 metres (about ten feet). That is not bad from outer space, but not nearly as good as a drone’s camera can manage.
Satellite coverage, though, has the advantage of being both broad and frequent, whereas a drone can offer only one or the other of these qualities. Planet Lab’s constellation will be able to take a picture of a given bit of the Earth’s surface at least once a week, so that areas in trouble can be identified quickly and a more detailed examination made.

The best solution is to integrate aerial and satellite coverage. That is what Mavrx, also based in San Francisco, is trying to do. Instead of drones, it has an Uber-like arrangement with about 100 light-aircraft pilots around America. Each of the firm’s contracted planes has been fitted with a multispectral camera and stands ready to make specific sorties at Mavrx’s request. Mavrx’s cameras have a resolution of 20cm a pixel, meaning they can pretty much take in individual plants.

The firm has also outsourced its satellite photography. Its raw material is drawn from Landsat and other public satellite programmes. It also has access to these programmes’ libraries, some of which go back 30 years. It can thus check the performance of a particular field over decades, calculate how much biomass that field has supported from year to year and correlate this with records of the field’s yields in those years, showing how productive the plants there have been. Then, knowing the field’s biomass in the current season, it can predict what the yield will be. Mavrx’s method can be scaled up to cover entire regions and even countries, forecasting the size of the harvests before they are gathered. That is powerful financial and political information. NEWS FROMAROUND THE WORLD.

NIPSS COURSE 39 TO DESIGN SCIENTIFIC APPROACH ON FG AGRICULTURE POLICY.

Senior Executive members of Course 39, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, near Jos, in Plateau State have said that they would adopt scientific approach to Federal Government’s policy on agriculture as to hasten new technologies  to develop the sector.

The team leader, Dr. Nasiru Usman , stated this on Monday during the Course 39  courtesy visit on Governor Abubakar Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi State at Government House, Birnin-Kebbi.

Usman noted that because of the present administration on the agricultural sector, they have decided that this year’s theme would be  raged ” Science , Technology and Innovation in Developing Agriculture and Agro Allied Industries in Nigeria”,.

He said:  ” Kebbi was strategically selected for the tour because of its leading position in agriculture especially rice , the President charges the senior executive course members to see how agriculture can be developed using scientific and technological ways as well as that agro allied industries .

” We will see what people of the state are doing in agriculture , we see what the state and federal governments are also doing, the challenges and in the end come up with a report which will be part of policy formulation ”, he said.

Usman added that the Institute was established in 1979 as a center for research, dialogue and reflection to assist the government in strategic policy formulation.

In his remarks, Governor Bagudu represented by his deputy, Alhaji Samaila Yombe Dabai, commended the President Muhammadu Buhari for launching the CBN Anchor Borrower Program which according to him has succeeded with about 2.5 million tones of rice within the first year.
He described Federal Government action’s as a practical measure to ensure Nigeria were self reliant nation in food production. BY OLANREWAJU LAWAL

MAKING AGRICULTURE COMPULSORY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

ONE positive outcome of the present excruciating recession is the realization by the government of the urgent need to move aware from our over dependence on revenue generated from exporting crude oil, to other more sustainable sectors with multiplier economic benefits such as agriculture and solid minerals. The present government at all levels has not failed to inform us of its commitment to diversify our contracted economy through agriculture. The potential for accelerated economic growth through agriculture cannot be overstated. To buttress this reality, in 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FOA) stated that agriculture is eleven times more effective in poverty-reduction than any other sector.

The agricultural sector remains the most reliable enabler of economic growth. In Nigeria, it presently employs about 60-70% of our labour force, contributes around 40% of our GDP, and the second highest foreign exchange earner after oil. This is not to deny the reality that the sector has been neglected for close to over four decades now, as a result of the oil boom in the 1970s. In the years before 1975, Nigeria accounted for over 60% of the global supply of palm oil, 35 per cent of groundnut, 23% of groundnut oil and 25% of cocoa. Afterwards, due to neglect, agriculture has been practised more on paper than on the farms. Its image has been battered, as it is associated with the poor, crude methods (hardship) and subsistence living.

Some of the challenges that afflicted the sector includes but not limited to lack of political will; inconsistency in policies; poor public investment in research, mechanization, technology; inadequate or absence of critical infrastructure; limited access to credit; lack of good agricultural practices and standardization; poor market accessibility; corruption and politicization of the sector. This has led to the overdependence on importation of food items, which we have the capacity to produce better quality. It is unfortunate that our import bill for just five products cost us between 3-5billion dollars annually. These monies that should be used to revitalize the agricultural sector, and attract more private sector investments, are being taken out of the country to the benefit of others.

This is as a result of inconsistency and limited successes of previous policies such as the National Accelerated Food Production Programme (NAFPP) in 1972; Operation Feed the Nation, 1976; River Basin and Rural Development Authorities, 1976; Green Revolution Programme, 1980; Agriculture in Nigeria: The New Policy Thrust, 2001 and the National Food Security Programme (NFSP) in August 2008. The Agriculture Transformation Agenda of 2011-2015, even with its own peculiar challenges, was at least able to shift the paradigm back to agriculture, especially as a business. The present policy is the Agricultural Promotion Policy 2016-2020, which has broken the jinx of policy inconsistency as it is a modified and improved continuation of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda.

While my prayer is that we will see more consistency in policy even after 2020; my worry is that no adequate and sustainable provision, legal or policy, has been made to address the issue of the ageing farming population and youth apathy towards agriculture. The key challenge is that the present generation of youth has grown up with the wrong perception that agriculture is a dirty and labour-intensive activity meant for the poor in rural communities. This has made it the more difficult to attract young people into the agricultural sector; but all hope is not lost as we have come across a Bill presently in the House of Assembly, that when passed, will go a long way in rebranding the perception of the younger ones towards agriculture.

Presently, in the House of Representatives, there is a bill being sponsored by Honorable Yusuf Buba Yakub, representing Gombi/Hong Federal Constituency of Adamawa State in the National Assembly. The short title of the Bill is “Mandatory Inclusion of Agricultural Science in Secondary Schools Curriculum in Nigeria 2016”. The Bill which has passed second reading is designed to stimulate and sustain students interest in agriculture to enable students acquire useful knowledge and skills in line with global standards.

This will ensure that the students become knowledgeable in both the theoretical and practical aspect of agriculture at their tender age. By catching them young, it will cultivate and sustain their interest in and passion for agriculture.

Some of the key features of the bill include: Establishment – the Educational Research Institute is mandated to provide for mandatory inclusion of Agricultural Science as a core and compulsory subject for all secondary schools in Nigeria; Regulation/Implementation- (i) the Institute shall liaise with the states Ministry of Education to ensure the inclusion of Agricultural Science in the Secondary Schools Curriculum, (ii) the Agricultural Science shall be made a compulsory subject in all Junior Secondary Schools in those states; Short Title- This bill may be cited as the Mandatory Inclusion of Agricultural Science in Secondary Schools Curriculum in Nigeria Bill 2016.

Indeed, the significance of this Bill, when passed, cannot be overemphasized as it will guarantee inter-generational continuity and supply of skilled labour force in the agricultural sector. The study of agricultural science, even though not new, should be of paramount importance if we are serious about sustainable economic growth and development through diversification using agriculture. This will see a close synergy between the Ministry of Agriculture and that of Education in coming out with a curriculum that links the demand and supply of skilled labour in the agricultural sector. In schools that are presently offering agricultural science as a subject; agricultural laboratories will be created, and emphasis placed on practical not just theory. This will not only sustain interest but encourage innovation among the passionate students.

This and many more reasons are why the Coalition of Association for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment & Development (CALPED) is fully supporting the Bill, due to its multiplier economic benefits when passed into law. We also call on all well-meaning Nigerians (especially members of the National Assembly, CSOs, farming groups and media) to also see the Bill not only for Honorable Yusuf Buba Yakub to promote, but one that will benefit us all when passed and so we should advocate for and support it.

Goje is of the Coalition of Association for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment & Development (CALPED) BY YUSUF ISHAKU.