POVERTY: Nigeria: Poverty Eradication through Agriculture and Enterprise Revolution

May 1st, 2011 : Peter Osalor

The story of Nigerian agriculture is best read between the lines of its political history. Africa’s most populous nation had an overwhelmingly agricultural economy during the hundred years spent under British colonial rule since 1860, and well into the first decade after its independence.
In the 1960s Nigeria was the world’s second largest producer of cocoa, the largest exporter of palm oil and a principal producer and exporter of cotton, rubber and groundnut. Working traditional tools and practices, Nigerian peasants contributed 70% of export revenue and 60% of GDP in the same period. The total food requirement was met almost entirely by local produce and agricultural imports were to the bare minimum.
Circumstances changed radically with the oil boom of the 1970s, as the discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in the strategically significant sub-Saharan nation turned its fortunes overnight.
The windfall transformed Nigeria’s agricultural landscape into a gigantic oil field criss-crossed by more than 7,000 km of pipelines connecting 6,000 oil wells, two refineries, innumerable flow stations and export terminals. The colossal investments in the sector paid off, with unofficial estimates suggesting Nigeria raked in more than $600 billion in petrodollars in the last decade alone.
Unfortunately, the obsession with non-renewables over all other sectors of the economy eventually turned Nigeria’s boon into a bane. New found wealth spawned political instability and massive corruption in government circles, and the country was rent asunder by decades of violent civil war and successive military coups.
Agriculture was one of the first casualties of the oil regime, and by the 1990s, cultivation accounted for just 5% of GDP. Farming modernisation and support continued to remain low on the list of national priorities as vast stretches of rural Nigeria gradually plunged into poverty and food scarcity. Deforestation, soil erosion and industrial pollution further hastened the down-spiral of agriculture to the point where it ended up as a subsistence activity.
The fall of Nigerian agriculture coincided with the collapse of its macroeconomic and human development indicators. With income distribution concentrated on a few urban pockets, the majority of rural Nigeria was left reeling under massive poverty, unemployment and food shortages. A widening urban-rural divide sparked social unrest and mass migration into towns and cities.
Organised urban crime became as real a security threat as militancy in the Niger-Delta region. Nigeria plummeted to the bottom in world economic rankings and Africa’s most populous nation acquired the unhappy distinction of having more than half (54%) of its 148 million people living in abject poverty. The World Bank coined the term “Nigerian Paradox” specifically to describe the unique condition of extreme underdevelopment and poverty in a country brimming with resources and potential.
The country was ranked 80th in a 2007 UNDP poverty survey covering 108 countries.
The transition to democratic civilian rule at the end of the last century paved the way for an enthusiastic programme of economic reform and restructuring. Nigeria’s urgency for inclusive growth was much in evidence in the adoption of an ambitious blueprint designed to reverse trends and jump-start a stagnating economy.
The Vision 20-2020 document adopted under former president Olusegun Obasanjo lays out broad parameters for sustainable development with the specific goal of instating Nigeria as a global economic superpower in a time_bound manner.
The 2020 goals are in addition to Nigeria’s commitment to the UN Millennial Declaration of 2000 that proposes universal basic human rights by 2015.
The realisation of these allied and intertwined objectives depends entirely on Nigeria’s ability to bring about inclusive growth by means of an entrepreneurial revolution, while simultaneously correcting massive infrastructural shortages and administrative anomalies.
Economies usually begin expanding with an initial agricultural revolution: The case of Nigeria however calls for agriculture to be part of a larger enterprise revolution that efficiently leverages the nation’s extensive resources and human capital.
http://www.thenigeriandaily.com/2011/05/01/poverty-eradication-in-nigeria-through-agriculture-and-enterprise-revolution-part-1/

POVERTY: SWAZILAND: Deluge leaves farmers with weed-infested fields

  Photo: James Hall/IRIN: Fani Shongwe tackling the weeds in his family's field

MBABANE, 7 January 2011 (IRIN) - Heavy rain since November 2010 has ensured crops in the traditionally dry parts of food-insecure Swaziland have enough water, but for the 80 percent of the population who are subsistence farmers on communal land, the showers are less welcome, due to the sudden growth spurt of weeds, and flooded fields.
After planting, many farmers have been unable to access their fields. "First it was mud and now it is dense weeds that are inhibiting the farmers. Herbicides are not widely distributed. Some farmers consider them taboo. They say they are killing their fields," said Bheki Ginindza, an agriculture specialist with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Swaziland.
Fani Shongwe, a 20-year-old farmer’s son, uses a machete to slash shoulder-high weeds choking a corner of his family’s field where groundnuts and pumpkins are usually grown.
"The weeds have never been this high. They are like bushes. We don’t use chemicals because we can’t afford them and you have to go to Manzini [the country's largest town]. That costs R30 [about US$4.40] by bus because we don’t have a truck. But nobody uses chemicals because they are dangerous," he said.
"Weeds can cut back productivity, probably by 30-40 percent. It is significant. The quality of growth is also affected. Maize stalks don’t grow as tall, and pumpkins are smaller and misshapen because they compete for nutrients with the weeds. The rains this summer are a double-edged sword - they cut through the drought but encourage weed infestations," said Amos Dube, an agriculture extension officer who works with farmers in the usually dry grasslands of the lowveld in eastern Swaziland.
Herbicides
The problem small farmers like Shongwe face is real. First it was mud and now it is dense weeds that are inhibiting the farmers
The Ministry of Agriculture licenses only one firm to distribute herbicides, Farm Chemicals in Malkerns, 35km southeast of the capital Mbabane, but no delivery system is in place to get the herbicides to farmers, who can ill-afford to go and get them themselves. There are no herbicide subsidies either.
"Chemicals are expensive but they are cheaper than the habit farmers have of paying neighbours up to R20 [$3] a day to do weeding. Manual weeding isn’t as thorough, and there is productivity loss... and this season shows we must change that," said FAO's Ginindza.
"I’ve seen a few cases where farmers were misusing chemicals. For instance, you find farmers using broadleaf [weed killing] herbicides at the beginning of the season before planting, which encourages grasses… Farmers think when they apply the herbicides they can expect no weeds for the year. They don’t understand timing. The Agriculture Ministry is bringing in instructors to work with the farmers, to remove the stigma against herbicides," he added.
Agricultural extension officer Dube is optimistic there could be a good harvest if efforts are made to get rid of the weeds.

Adapting to changing weather
In the past few years, as the rainy season has shifted, farmers have learnt to plant from late October onwards rather than from late September to early October.
"In 2007 the rains cut off in December, and in January the crops died. Most farmers planted in October," said Ginindza.
"We learned from that year that our planting season is in fluctuation. In the past 3-5 years there has been a shift to later rains. Some farmers are planting well into January. So this season is still salvageable," Ginindza said.
The farmers were prepared when the rains came late in 2010. But Swaziland has not seen rains on this scale in the past two decades.
"The lowveld has recorded some of the summer’s highest rainfall," said Sunshine Gamedze, an agrimeteorologist with Swaziland Meteorological Service, who does forecasts for the farming community.
There is a well-established La Niña influence over Southern Africa. La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, and is usually associated with more rain in Southern Africa. "It seems to be affecting eastern Southern Africa at the moment," said Luis Fernandes, a forecaster with the South African weather services.
Erratic weather, high fuel and input costs, the impact of HIV/AIDS and poor agricultural practices have affected the production of the staple maize in Swaziland over the past decade, according to the World Food Programme. The average annual yield has dropped from over 100,000 tons in 2000 to 70,000 tons.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91557