Shortage of high-yielding seed varieties has become a clog in the wheel of President Muhammadu Buhari’s agriculture agenda, as it threatens to significantly slash output in 2016.
Nigeria needs 350,000 metric tonnes (MT) of seeds such as rice, maize and sorghum in 2016, but is confronted with the supply-demand gap of 231,000MT, estimated at N81 billion, according to Audu Ogbeh, minister of agriculture and rural development, who spoke earlier this month at a workshop.
The supply-demand gap of good or high quality seed varieties now pushes farmers to massively rely on low quality varieties from stored seeds and unscrupulous merchants, according to Ogbeh.
This threatens Nigeria’s quest for food security and local productivity, while exposing Africa’s biggest to dumping.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) paints a gory picture of the impact of low quality seeds on agricultural productivity in Nigeria, stating in its April 4, 2016 report that production of sorghum dropped 8.21 percent to 6.15 million MT in 2015, from 6.7 million MT in 2014.
Corn production has dropped for three consecutive years from 7.7 million MT in 2013, to 7.5 million MT in 2014, amid the biggest drop of 6.85 percent to seven million tonnes in 2015. Production of milled rice also recorded decline in volume by 4.44 percent, falling from 2.8 million MT in 2014 to 2.7 million tonnes in 2015.
“With the shortage of seeds, what is likely to happen is that in looking for alternatives, farmers plant poor quality grains. When they use poor quality seed, they will get very low yield and poor harvest,” Matthew Omidiji, managing director, Premier Seeds Nigeria Limited told BusinessDay.
“There are people in the country who specialise in producing quality seed and can produce a lot if the government wants them to, but the problem is that the one produced last year has not been paid for, so government cannot approach them again,”
Adeola Elliot, chairman of the Agriculture Group of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), expressed scepticism on the possibility of meeting seed requirements for this year’s production through local sources.
“The total of what they can produce between now and the end of this year cannot be enough to go round the farmers to achieve the objective of this government,” said Elliot.
“As a stop gap, importation (of required seeds) may be done in the interim. However, we need to keep driving the initiative of local production.”
Stakeholders in Nigeria’s seed industry say there has been so much talk from the government and little action, stating that insincerity of the authorities could dampen 2016 targets.
Olatunji Adenola, president, Maize Association of Nigeria, told BusinessDay that the association made 1,000 tonnes of maize seeds available to the government in 2014 but has not been paid till date.
“It depends on the programme the country has. If the government thinks it has a special programme that requires certain quantity of seed, they would be the one to decide. For us as an association, we have no problem because we know we have seed to achieve the little we can do. As an association, we cannot carry the load of the nation.”
According to experts, the preponderance of poor seedlings would threaten food security in Africa’s largest economy and deepen the country’s dependence on imported foods.
Timely availability of improved varieties to farmers should be a priority in farming system because the quality of seeds determines the crop response to other inputs, they say, adding that a lot of local farmers have been given seeds that promise high yields but fail to produce enough.
“We don’t have access to quality seeds. Even the seedlings they gave to us last year under the growth enhancement scheme are of low quality. This affected my produce badly that I couldn’t even produce anything significant,” said Abiodun Olorundenro, a farmer in Oke-Odan, Ogun State.
The number of seed companies in country increased from five in 2011 to about 80 seeds companies’ today. In spite of this, most of the hybrid seeds in the country are not viable and are of low quality.
Afioluwa Mogaji, chief executive officer, X-RAY Farms, said, “The issue of seeds in the country is that farmers are not informed and they don’t know where to get these quality seeds from. Extension service agents that are supposed to educate and inform farmers hardly visit their farmlands.”
Caleb Ojewale & Martins Noel
