Government must ban rice importation in 2015—

When he talks about agriculture, he does so with passion and facts. You might not agree with his positions on some issues, but you will not be disappointed at the ways he goes about marshalling his points. That person is Mr. Emmanuel Ijewere, the CEO, Best Foods. He is involved in agriculture in terms of farming and many of the value chains like meat processing and horticulture. He is also involved as the coordinator of a body called Committee of Agricultural Stakeholders of Nigeria (CASON), apart from being asked to help coordinate the new group set up by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, called the Agriculture Business Group. In this interview with JIMOH BABATUNDE, the man who chairs the agriculture and food security commission of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group talks about the Agric Transformation Agenda, the role of the private sector and the need to ban rice importation come next year. Here is an excerpt. On his assessment of the agriculture transformation agenda The word transformation agenda was talked about not as an agenda, but transformation. It is this government that now gave reality, gave life and a form to the concept of transformation agenda. So, NESG is not taking credit for it. This government should take credit for it. Now, how is it affecting our people? It is easier for me to explain it in a practical fashion. You will remember that there was a time when Obasanjo, being a farmer himself, wanted to help farmers and he said let us go for areas we have comparative advantages. He started with cassava; he went abroad and got contracts from China and asked Nigerians to produce cassava. He meant well, but there was something that went wrong. That was the problem of value chain. First, we had not prepared the ground for the right type of stems that would sooth it. Two, the farming system we had always adopted had always been the same and therefore there were small holders, even the cost of going to collect from these little farms on one acre, half acre, two plots was so expensive. Thirdly, there was no central processing. Fourthly, the type of specie of cassava that was required for this huge demand was not there. In other words, everybody was producing cassava, but some are different from others for specific purposes and finally where were these processing units to which the various farmers would sell their products? You will remember that cassava has short life immediately after harvest. The beautiful idea became a nightmare. A lot of people planted cassava to the extent they had nothing else to do as the only thing they knew about cassava was making garri. And the market were filled up with garri to the extent these women carried the garri to the market but they could not sell, it was cheaper for them to throw it away than pay for transportation to take it back home. It was a disaster. It was not because Obasanjo didn’t mean well, it was because the value chain had not been created. Everybody should be an expert in its own field and not create a situation where you have to do everything. So, this transformation Agenda is set up to address that kind of situation. Let us start from the other end. It is not just on cassava specifically, it is not just today that you are talking of supply of chips to china, it has gone beyond that. The starch industry in Nigeria is getting bigger, ethanol is coming on board. We are now having a situation now where this government is driving the composite cassava flour bread and this same cassava will be held for so many other things. So with that now, you are creating a market and the market is diversified as more and more people are getting to know more about this and you are now having bigger farms, the bigger farmers you have, the more economic it is for whoever is doing it. You can harvest in one place and process in that same place, but if you have to go from place to place, then the cost of doing that is very expensive.