Some stakeholders in agri
culture yesterday called for replacement of subsistence farming with mechanised farming to eradicate poverty and guarantee food security in the nation
The stakeholders, at the inaugural meeting of the National Cooperative for Commercial and Industrial Agriculture (NACCIA) in Lagos, stressed the need to organise the sector for higher productivity.
Reports say that NACCIA was formed to reposition agricultural practice in Nigeria to global standard.
The founder of the cooperative, Chief Felix Okonti, told newsmen that NACCIA was formed to address problems that reduced output of farmers in Nigeria despite massive deployment of labour.
Okonti, who is also the Managing Director of Lix-Konti Ranch, said that NACCIA was forming farmers into clusters to relate as federating members to address problems of funding, processing, storage and markets for produce.
“What we want to achieve is to do it differently for Nigeria whereby less than a hundred or a thousand people can produce what more than 50 million people are producing today.
“The aim is to place Nigeria in the map as industrialised agro based commercial country that can fulfil its potentials.
“Why would Argentine maize producer produce 16 tons per hectare, while the Nigerian farmer is doing 0.3 tons per hectare?’’ he queried.
Okont said that NACCIA already had over 100 federating units where every farmer ran his farm but fell back to the cooperative to cultivate, process and sell without losses.
He said that the cooperative would also set up processing plants for clusters of federating farms that would extend the model to all farmers in their environment to curb wastages and financial losses.
Okonti said members would be mobilised with a minimum of N100 million to start, adding that various committees were being formed to properly guide farmers towards investments.
He appealed to the Federal Government to construct roads leading to farms and develop other infrastructure and power to promote commercial agriculture.
Prof. Mohammed Yisa, the immediate past Deputy Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly, who was chairman of the occasion, lamented that Nigeria imported almost all agricultural products it could produce.
“It is not good for a country with over two million hectares of arable land to be buying things. “We cannot rely on hoe and cutlass or peasant farmers who do about two acres to feed us; that is why we need mechanised farming’’ he said.
Yisa, a former Commissioner for Agriculture, said that there was need to revolutionalise the sector to attract foreign investors and encourage Nigerians to do business and plan for it.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Dr Danju Danbala, delivering a keynote address, said commercial agriculture was the antidote to poverty and food insufficiency.
“In many developed economies cooperatives are known to have made invaluable impact in agriculture, commerce, industry and have transformed their society greatly. Not so in Nigeria, why?”, he said.