Investors in commercial and industrial agriculture in Nigeria will now have adequate returns on their yields as do their counterparts in Italy, Spain, Israel and Argentina, among others.

This was one of the outcomes of an inaugural meeting of stakeholders in large scale agriculture, hosted at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) by their umbrella body known as the National Co-operative for Commercial and Industrial Agriculture (NACCIA).

The initiator of NACCIA, Chief Felix Okonti, who convened the meeting said the body was conceived to reposition and boost industrial and commercial agriculture in the country to raise it to global level.

Okonti, a Lawyer and the Managing Director of Lix-Konti Ranch, said the process would be achieved through the involvement of professionals and stakeholders from all spheres of live, adding that it was regrettable that Nigerians still practiced subsistence agriculture, which would meet the needs of Nigerians.

He observed that Nigerians who invest in agriculture do not get commensurate returns, regardless of the huge financial and human resources they used.

He wondered why an Argentine maize farmer would produce 16 tons per hectare, while the Nigerian farmer produces 0.3 tons per hectare.

NACCIA, he said already has over 100 federating units where every farmer would run his or her farm but that they were expected to fall back to the Co-operative to cultivate, process and sell without losses. Okonti said NACCIA is expected to form farmers into clusters to relate as federating members to address problems of funding, processing, storage and markets for their produce.

The Co-operative, according to him, is expected to achieve its purpose by doing things differently in Nigeria, "where less than a hundred or a thousand people can produce what more than 50 million people are producing today, insisting that the aim is to place Nigeria in the map as industrialised agro-based commercial country that can fulfill its potentials."

He also stated that the Co-operative would 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, who said members would be mobilised with a minimum of N100 million to start, pointed out that various committees have been formed to properly guide farmers towards investments.

He therefore appealed to the federal government to construct roads leading to farms and develop other infrastructure and power to promote and boost commercial agriculture in the country.

Chairman of the meeting, Prof. Gana Yisa, a farmer and immediate past Deputy Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly, said it is lamentable that Nigeria still imports almost all agricultural products it could produce.

He added that it was not good for a country with over two million hectares of arable land to be importing agricultural products from other countries, saying "We cannot rely on peasant farmers to feed the nation. Agriculture must be taken beyond the level it is now to be able to feed the nation. There must be access to land and credit facilities to boost agriculture in Nigeria. This is why we need mechanised farming", he said.

Expressing concern about the lack of credit facilities to farmers to invest in agricultural projects, he said "this journey being started today is to revolutionalise agriculture in Nigeria. So, it is a decision in the right direction. We believe and hope that by this event, we are chatting a new course for agriculture in Nigeria", Yisa noted.

Yisa, who is a former Commissioner for Agriculture in Kwara State, said "Commercial agriculture intends that you do more than what peasant farmers are doing. It is a large scale farming system that requires proper planning. Land, infrastructure, irrigation, storage and processing facilities, market, power, inputs such as quality seeds and fertilizers at affordable prices must be provided for commercial farmers.

"We need to produce our quality fertilizers, equipment such as tractors to reduce cost of mechanised farming. There must be access to credit facilities for long time repayment with low interest rate."

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Dr. Danju Danbala, represented by Mrs. Tokunbo Afolabi, said commercial agriculture is the antidote to poverty and food insufficiency in Nigeria, pointing out that in many developed economies, cooperatives are known to have made invaluable impact in agriculture, commerce, industry and have transformed their society greatly.

He said it was however not so in the country and wondered why. "To leverage on the Bank's limited resources and create larger pools of lending resources, the bank introduced partnerships with domain stakeholders. In the last four years, the bank had attracted well over N11 billion, in collaboration with NDDC, Osun, Cross River, Sokoto, Kebbi, Kaduna, Kano and Kogi states.

"Other partnership arrangements included those with IFAD/FGN and National Sugar Development Council. Collaborations of this nature, help the bank to deploy loan facilities to agro-entrepreneurs in groups and clusters that enhance them and associated stakeholders to develop pro-poor market initiative benchmarked to private sector approaches," he said.