Cultivating Nigeria ’s vast agricultural land with simple tools- Adeyemi Azeez

_In many local rice farms visited like those at Okada , experiences of farmers interacted with are a far cry from the rosy picture painted of the industry._

Many of these farmers have never had access to machines beyond simple farm tools . For most of them , the entire process from planting to harvesting is done by hand .

But why is it difficult to access machines like tractors and harvesters ?

One of the Okada rice farmers , Mr . Itorobong Udofia, shared an experience that illustrated how hard it is for local farmers to access machines for use in their farms .

In March 2017 , as the rice planting season began , he and his colleagues approached the Federal Ministry of Agriculture office in Edo State to hire a bulldozer to clear their land .
“The ministry officials told us that the bulldozers were in the custody of a contractor , who hired it out to farmers on behalf of the ministry . To hire a bulldozer , we were to pay the contractor N 150 ,000 ( $412 ) per day . Apart from that, we were required to pay the driver for his day ’s work and also fuel the bulldozer ,” he said .

The farmers ended up paying some youths to clear up a smaller area of the land than they intended with the use of cutlasses . They could not afford the cost implication of expanding their farm .

“Everybody is running away from agriculture today because it involves much labour and less profit . The youths want white collar jobs because using your hands to work in a farm is far from appealing, ” Udofia said .

At over 50 years old , as the man worked , it was obvious there was little his strength and the cutlass he was holding would allow him to do.
He got emotional when he spoke further , lamenting how much people now eat food produced outside Nigeria while Nigeria ’s millions of farmers suffer .
He said , “We have more than enough farmers in Nigeria . It is painful to see that what we could produce ourselves are being brought in from outside the country .
“How can this country progress when we are depending on food produced from other countries ? We continue to cultivate rice because we don ’t want to be idle.
“For local producers like us , lack of machinery and ability to parboil and remove sands work against the rice we produce .

“Nobody wants to eat rice and eat stone with it in this age . But what is the government doing to ensure the establishment of rice production value chain which is accessible to every farmer?
“Right now , it is so bad that many farmers still have to pound their harvested rice to remove the husk because of lack of access to machinery to mill it. ”
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One of the rice farms our correspondent visited is owned by Mr . Adeyemi Amao , in Asipa Ilao Village in Ogun State .
Despite the fact that his rice farm is at least more than 280 kilometres away from those at Okada , they share the same challenges.
On Amao ’s 13 - hectare rice farm , our correspondent met three women who were hard at work , armed with sickles and harvesting the rice .
When each woman had harvested and filled a 30 kg-bag , she called it a day and was paid for that day ’s work .

Amao asked for a sickle and joined in the harvesting . He pleaded with the women to be careful in order to minimise the waste which looked inevitable as the seeds shook to the ground while being handled .
This sort of manual process is one of the biggest challenges of rice cultivation for local farmers , Amao told Saturday PUNCH .
A graduate of the Federal University of Agriculture , Abeokuta , Amao said he cultivated his 13 hectares of rice farm with all his savings because he could not access any loan .
“If I get loans and access to machinery , I would have loved to expand this farm by three folds .”
He still faces the challenge of making his harvest profitable .

To cut down on the cost of production , Amao hires cheap labourers from across the border .
“I hire labourers from Cotonou, Benin Republic , who come into the country legally to work for me . They stay on the farm through the planting season and I pay them by buying motorcycles for them when they leave, ” he said .
He believes that food sufficiency cannot be achieved in Nigeria when the government focuses all its incentives on big companies , who produce food in large quantity for export.
This is an opinion shared by Professor of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management , Idris Ayinde, of the Federal University of Agriculture , Abeokuta .

Prof . Ayinde told our correspondent that the government is making a mistake of providing incentives to large farm owners leaving out the local farmers.
“Over 70 per cent of agricultural output from Nigeria , which is consumed in Nigeria is produced by local farmers.
“This is because the large scale farmers rarely sell in Nigeria . They sell to other countries within and outside the continent . There should be full rural development, roads and electricity and communication facilities , storage and processing factories .
“Farmers are ready to work if only the government is willing to come to their aid . The only place where agriculture is working is in the North , which has a less fertile land than the South , with abundant resources.”
With the manual process involved in the cultivation of local farms like those of Azeez in Ogun State and Andrew and his colleagues in Edo State , experts believe it is less likely that Nigeria would ever optimise its wasting agricultural land .

Unfortunately , as land wastes away in Edo State and other states known for massive rice cultivation in the past like Ekiti State ( known for its Igbemo rice ) and Ogun State ( known for its Ofada rice ) among others , drug cartels are moving in, converting the lands for the cultivation of cannabis.

A 2016 findings by our correspondent revealed that much of the land in Ekiti and Edo states that could be used for rice cultivation are now being used to grow cannabis, making the two states the largest producers of the weed in the country .