SULAIMON OLANREWAJU reports that in Kwara State, efforts are on to spread prosperity to the people by upgrading the farming population from subsistence to commercial farming.

The overarching vision of the Abdulfatah Ahmed-led administration in Kwara State is to transform the lives of the people of the state within the shortest possible time while establishing the state as an investment destination, an agricultural hub and a skills hub with a view to creating conditions for the people to become business owners and take charge of their lives, thus reducing their dependence on the government. The government hopes that by doing this, it would expand the middle class and effectively bridge the gulf between the rich and the poor and consequently reduce poverty in the state.

Governor Ahmed, who once said that 70 per cent of the population lives in rural areas and mainly practises subsistence farming, believes that commercial agriculture and agro-allied businesses would create the desired prosperity in the state. So, as a way of actualising the vision of empowering the farming population in the state, he wasted no time coming up with the Kwara State Agricultural Master Plan (KAMP) in 2012. KAMP is a five-year plan for generating agro-allied prosperity, wealth creation, job opportunities and food security through partnership among farmers, the private sector, multi-lateral organizations and government.

With KAMP, the government envisages that the state would achieve self-sufficiency in food production and economic transformation through a structured reform of the agricultural sector.  The project, which is in collaboration with the Cornell University, an internationally-renowned college of agriculture and life sciences in the United States, outlines strategies to improve the state’s agricultural and agro-industry infrastructure and harness the state’s agricultural endowment through the application of science and technology to the agricultural processes.

According to the governor, with the state having the ninth largest land mass in the country at approximately 36,000 square kilometers, of which approximately two million hectares is arable land, and being bordered in the north by River Niger, which is the third largest river in the whole of Africa at 2,600 miles length and drainage basin of over 800,000 square miles, failing to appropriate the benefits which commercial agriculture offers would be a monumental disservice to the people. So, extensive investment in agribusiness has become a norm in the state.

It is noteworthy that the government’s efforts have been producing results as a number of local and international organisations have entered into a PPP arrangement with the state. These include Valsolar S.L of Spain, with which the state entered into a 280 million Euro joint venture for the cultivation, processing and packaging of rice in the state, and Austravia of Hong Kong, with which a deal for the supply of 500, 000 tons of cassava chips per year was signed.

But while encouraging big time players in the sector, the state has not ignored the local operators as it has implemented the Agricultural Value Chain designed to institutionalise planned agriculture to offer farmers the opportunity to maximise yield along the chain.

According to the governor, this is meant to drive farmers from subsistence to commercial level. This, he says, “will make our farmers to truly see agribusiness as a means of economic empowerment. For us in Kwara State, we have gone further by not only enumerating our farmers, but clustering them according to cooperatives and compartmentalized them into crops; i.e. rice, maize, soya and cassava. These are the four crops we are taking to commercial level. These four crops will form feed stocks to a value chain development programme.”

To further underscore its commitment to empowering farmers, the state government recently disbursed N215million to 172 farmers who would serve as change agents in their various communities.

Speaking at the event, the governor said, “Today, we take a step closer to that dream of agro-driven growth with the launch of the Off-Taker Demand Driven Scheme to extend agribusiness to other parts of the state by empowering a new generation of commercial farmers to ensure our people are food secured, establish agribusiness as the pivot of our economy and regenerate agro-allied industrial development.”

But despite the strides taken by the state in the field of agriculture, there are still some concerns about the success rate of the experiment with Shonga Farms, which started before Governor Ahmed came into office.

Reacting to this, Dr Muyideen Akorede, Senior Special Assistant, Media and Communications to the state governor, said, “Shonga is thriving. Its dairy consortium has an arrangement with WAMCO, which gets 10 per cent of its milk supplied from the farm. It also has an arrangement with Nutricima, which also takes its milk from there. Promasidor recently signed an agreement with Shonga to get milk to make cheese.”

He added that Shonga had created more than 4,000 local jobs since it started. “You can imagine what that means to an economy like ours.”

Akorede said, “The crop syndicate, especially those that are involved in cassava production, has an MoU with a company from Hong Kong which buys 500 metric tonnes of cassava chips annually. The farm alone cannot cope with that, so it has to give this out to local cassava farmers. The key to it is the agricultural value chain system where by the time a farmer is planting a produce he knows the price at the other end of the chain.

So, there is no concern about what happens post-harvest, you can plan for your business. They are all doing very well,” he said.       

“The only area of challenge is the mixed cropping syndicate, who wanted to find funds to do year-round farming. So, we plan to do irrigation for them. It is very capital-intensive, we are hoping to get funding from the Federal Government but it has not happened yet. So, there is a slight issue there. But in terms of the dairy and the cropping, they are doing very well.”

Speaking on return on investments, Akorede, who said that the government was satisfied with how its investment in agriculture was positively impacting on the lives of the citizens, observed that “The reality of commercial farming is that it is long term, you can’t expect turn around in terms of profitability in less than 10 years. But the good thing is that the government has started it. The government has consistently empowered small holding farmers to be able to expand their businesses to meet with the demand of the big commercial farming concerns across the state.

What the government is trying to do is to extend the lessons learnt from Shonga, in terms of commercial farming to other parts of the state. So that our effort to build this hub is successful, we become more food secure as we build more agro-allied industries and enhance the livelihood of our farmers.”