|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Low yields of agricultural produce are consistently stifling the targets of Nigerian farmers and policy makers. The country’s cassava yield per hectare is fewer than eight tonnes as against Thailand’s 22. Rice yield per hectare in Africa’s biggest economy is just about three to four tonnes as against China’s 6.5, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Similarly, tomato yield per hectare in Nigeria is five to six tonnes when compared with India’s 12.
This puts Nigeria’s capacity to avoid food crisis in doubt. With a population of 183 million and its potential to reach 391 million by 2015, experts foresee danger in Nigeria if nothing is done to increase agriculture output.
One major reason for low yields of crops is that Nigerian farmers and policy makers are failing to apply proven scientific breakthroughs that raise productivity.
Currently, Tuta Absoluta is ravaging tomato crops in many parts of Nigeria while armyworms are eating up the country’s maize, pushing brewers and other manufacturers into importation of the crop, which is a major input.
However, tomato scarcity currently being experienced in the country could have been avoided had Nigerian farmers planted new varieties that could adapt to the local environment or grown the crop in insect-screen environment as is done in China.
Crop Life International explained this with Hawaii’s disease-resistant biotech papaya cultivated since 1998, which has overcome the deadly ringspot virus threatening to wipe out the country’s papaya production.
“The technology rescued the Hawaiian papaya industry and has encouraged the development of other disease-resistant crop varieties, such as fruit trees resistant to the plum pox virus,” Crop Life International, an online plant science research paper, said.
According to Eric Umeofia, chief executive of Erisco Foods Limited, a tomato processor in Nigeria, applying this method would have saved the country from wastes coming from Tuta Absoluta.
Secondly, biotechnology has enabled countries such as China, India and the United States to develop healthier foods for the people.
About 2.5 million children in Nigeria are malnourished, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Malnutrition is easy to tackle with biofortification of crops already taking place across the world. Currently, minerals or inorganic compound are added to fertilizer by traditional plant breeding or biotechnology method, though the application of fertilizers biofortified with micronutrients is the most simple of these methods, according to Kathleen L. Hefferon of the University of Toronto, Canada.
Also, a new variety of biotech rice, which has the capacity to reduce the impact of vitamin A deficiency responsible for 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and up to two million deaths each year, exists in many parts of the world and can help in Nigeria.
Dow Chemical Company has just launched Enlist™ corn in the U.S and Canada for the 2018 growing season, which enables farmers to maximise yield by controlling weeds.
“Weed control is still a major problem in Nigeria. This king of technology is what Nigerian farmers need at the moment when Nigeria’s focus is on increased crop productivity,” said Ahmed Abdul, a farmer in Kaduna State, north-western Nigeria.
“But this requires funding and some form of subsidy from the government because if you invest in it, how are you sure you will get back your money when you sell?” Abdul asked.
The Nigerian economy is currently crimped by currency crisis caused by low oil revenue, resulting from global oil market crash. Nigeria, a mono-cultural economy, relies on oil for 90 percent foreign exchange and 75 percent revenue.
However, efforts are now geared towards revenue and economic diversification with agriculture taking the centre stage.
Crop Life says varieties of maize have been modified to contain an insecticidal protein from a naturally occurring soil microorganism (Bt) that provides plants protection from corn borer worms. In 2014, Bangladesh became the first country in the world to approve the commercial planting of insect-resistant brinjal (eggplant), adds Crop Life.
“Many countries today have drought-tolerant crops, which can survive in low rainfall areas. As we turn to agriculture, we need to begin to look at genetically-modified foods very closely, without completely shutting them out. We also need to embrace the ICT,” said Ifeanyi Okeleke, CEO of Kenfrancis Frams Limited.
ODINAKA ANUDU
