Adesina woos Brazilian Farmers, Investors over to Nigeria.

[FMINigeria]

                        Given the advanced technology for farming in Brazil, Nigeria has asked for a close partnership with Brazil in order for the country to understand how Brazil developed its agriculture.

Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina made this call during a dinner with Brazilian investors and stakeholders in agribusiness in Sao Paulo during an official tour of agro-ventures in Brazil.  He said Brazil was a net exporter of food just like Nigeria few years ago and that if Brazil could rise above her challenges, then Nigeria has no reason to remain where it is today.  The growing influence of Brazil in global economic fora is linked to her ability to feed herself and export to the world community.

The Nigerian Minister noted that the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) of the country recognized the fact that Nigeria's dependency on oil is not a sustainable thing and so it was decided that the economy must be grown in a manner that it would create jobs.  The efforts made so far under ATA, he explained, "Has made Nigeria the 4th fastest growing economy in the world and number one when it comes to foreign direct investment, so there is no doubt that Nigeria is coming up just as Brazil", he re-emphasized.

Dr. Adesina hinted that the size of Nigeria's Agriculture is $99Billion a year and "We want to grow that to about $256Billion annually, but we should not wait till 10 years or 20 years before seeking credible partnership with those whose history is in sync with Nigeria's".  He expressed the belief Nigeria has a lot to learn from Brazil experience in order to achieve the purpose of ATA.

The goal of the transformation, he told the Brazilian investors, is to add 20 Million metric tons of food to the domestic food supply and create 3.5 Million jobs over a four year period.  To ensure that the goal was met, he said Nigeria has started to do agriculture differently by treating it as a business rather than a developmental project and allowing the private sector to lead the fight against hunger and poverty.

He stressed, "It is not the job of government to produce anything, the job of the government is to provide enabling environment, policies, institutions, incentives, infrastructure and regulations to get agriculture to grow, so we have taken the government out of it and allowed the private sector to take a centre stage".

In order to achieve the goal of ATA, the Minister said the government has started doing a lot of things differently which include value chain approach to agriculture, focusing on import substitutions and getting private sectors, a regular investment. He said the government is also providing incentives for private sectors to grow the agriculture sector in the way it has never been done before. The incentives, he stated include, tax holidays, 0% duty on all agricultural machineries and equipment.

On the private sector approach taken by the government, he explained, "We have developed a risk sharing facility with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that will leverage $3.5 Billion into the agricultural sector and the country has received a lot of global recognition in the last one year; in addition to $8Billion of private sector investment commitment to Nigeria Agriculture and that continues to grow".

As a government that takes target seriously, he revealed that in the year 2012, the country was able to add 8.1 M metric tons as against 5M metric tons which are 70% above the target set by ATA of adding 20M metric tons of food to the domestic food supply in over a four year period.

He listed the key areas, he believed Nigeria and Brazil could work together on to include, Horticulture, Beef, Mechanization, Soybean, Cassava, Maize and Ethanol.

The Minister said it was disheartening to note that despite the fact that, "Nigeria accounts for the 2nd largest in the World after Indonesia in terms of Pilgrims to Mecca, but when they get there, they eat Halal certified beef from Brazil, Argentina and Spain.   "I think if Nigeria is the second largest in terms of pilgrims, we should also be the 2nd largest beef exporter to Saudi Arabia and this can only be made possible if we have real beef value chain as Brazil, Nigeria has a lot of livestock and we want to develop our beef industry".

He also reiterated the need to get investors to invest in Mechanization, bring in high quality tractors and equipment and also establish training centres for mechanization." Agriculture must solve our unemployment problems", he emphasized.

Dr. Adesina assured Brazilian investors that Nigeria on his own part has made efforts to ensure that investment in agriculture pays off by coming up with a model called Staple Crops Processing Zones (SCPZ) which was borne out of the need to set up processing plants in zones of high food production in order to process commodities into finished products.

The Minister during the visit inspected the school feeding program and commended the Brazil "0 Hunger Strategy" which guarantees access of children from Nursery to Secondary School to free and nutritious food.

He also applauded Brazil's law that says that 30% of the net food procure for school feeding must be purchased from the local farmers, "The whole idea is to improve the local production; I am delighted with the fact that they are buying the food in the local community and thereby creating market for the farmers, increasing their income and the children are also being fed with nutritious food which will help them to be healthy".

He opined that the programme ought to be done by many developing countries because it is all about investing in the future of children.

The Nigerian Minister also paid a study visit to Embrapa and discussed the transfer of specific technologies, learning about its structure and Management system and understanding the innovations which allowed Brazil to convert the Cerrado to tremendous source of food production.

The Brazil study visit was arranged and supported by Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for the main purpose of ensuring that Nigeria looks inward and harness its potentials and become a net exporter of food just as Brazil.

The Brazilian Minister of Agriculture; Antonio Andrade in his remarks, said Brazil government would look forward to a mutual relationship between the two countries where each benefits from one another since they have a lot in common as he said Brazilian government has also shown interest in Nigeria's E-wallet programme for farmers and is willing to partner with Nigeria on this.

In her closing remarks, the Senior Program Officer, (BMGF) Dr. Valerie Bemo said Nigeria has all it takes to attain Brazil's height in agriculture; she applauded the efforts of the Minister in doing things differently and assured him of BMGF's continued support.

Via: Federal Ministry of Information (FMI) Nigeria