Expert advocates policy coherence to boost agriculture

Mr Eze Onyekpere, Lead Director, Centre for Social Justice, has called for coherence between the Federal Government’s Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP) and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) to boost agriculture.

Eze, who made the call in a paper he delivered at the Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on 2018 Agriculture Budget in Kaduna on Monday.

He underscored the need for greater policy coherence in ongoing efforts to develop the agriculture sector.

He said that while ERGP was a short term ad hoc policy which ran from 2017 to 2020, the APP seemed to be more long-term and embedded in the continuum of previous policies.

“Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP) is still short term since it is a policy of an administration that may likely not survive the administration,’’ he said.

Eze said that while ERGP was the overarching policy framework, the specifics and details of agriculture were worked out in the APP, adding, however, that the details came before the overarching framework.

He said that APP, on the other hand, introduced food as a human rights issue, which should compel the government to recognise, protect and fulfil the irreducible minimum degree of freedom from hunger and malnutrition.

“The clear duties of state in human rights jurisprudence, the minimum core obligation and minimum core content of the right to adequate food in this context becomes clear targets for state accountability,’’ he said.

Eze noted that even though the value chains approach was embedded in the two policies, ERGP saw value chains beyond the agriculture and linked them up with the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP).

He stressed the need to maximise the benefits from the country’s agricultural resources by building an end-to-end integrated agriculture value chain, boosting local production to meet local demand, while reducing the country’s reliance on imports of processed food products.

Eze cited palm oil as a veritable example of the full value chain of a commodity, saying that palm oil was used for the production of soaps, detergents, lipstick, chocolate, ice cream, instant noodles, shampoo, bread, biodiesel, cookies and pizza, among others.

He also said that what the local cocoa farmer could get out of the primary commodity was less than 20 per of what he would have got from a processed commodity like chocolate.

Eze, however, said that the value chains approach seemed to be questioned by the export crops orientation, which the APP proposed to add on beyond 2018.

“The APP is now clear that we can no longer continue to export primary commodities without beneficiation and value addition.

“Export of primary products will not solve the challenges of foreign exchange, job creation and technology acquisition, among others, besetting our country,’’ he said.

Eze conceded that import substitution was a great idea, adding that the policy had some reservations.

“But for export orientation to compliment the diversification of the economy, it must come with value addition, which links it with industrial and trade policy; energy policy in terms of renewables, the environment, works and water resources,’’ he said.

Eze noted that APA and ERGP strongly underscored the need to facilitate and encourage research, adding that the two policies viewed agriculture as a business.

“Building infrastructure to support the sector; marketing and trade, storage, processing, access to finance; inputs- seeds, seedlings, fertiliser; crops, fish and aquaculture are all covered by both policies,’’ he said.

Eze said that agriculture was central to the pillars of ERGP for 2020, adding that restoring growth would involve the improvement of agricultural productivity as well as utilisation and conversion of agriculture commodities into finished valuable products.

“This is because building a competitive economy will need to fall back on our areas of comparative advantage, which must include agriculture — crops such as cocoa, cotton, palm produce and cassava.

“If agriculture grows, increases productivity and delivers more income along its value chain, there will be greater resources for investing in our people, leading to job creation, youth empowerment, social inclusion and improvement of human capital,’’ he added.

Also speaking, Mr Azubike Nwokoye, Programme Advisor, Food and Agriculture, ActionAid Nigeria, commended the Federal Government for the increase of budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector in the proposed 2017 budget.

Nwokoye gave the commendation in his paper on “Analysis of the 2017 Proposed Budget of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD).

He also lauded the government for implementing one of the recommendations of the stakeholders’ consultative meeting in 2016, which was to allocate research funds to institutions and agencies set up to carry out research and development activities, instead of concentrating such funds at the headquarters of FMARD.

He said that although there was a year-to-year improvement in the budget of the agricultural sector from 2015 to 2017, the budget was still very low, when juxtaposed with the total Federal Government’s budget.

“This is not encouraging, especially when one considers the significant role of the sector in digging this nation out of recession, reducing unemployment, improving our foreign reserves and ensuring the nation’s food security,’’ he said.

Besides, Nwokoye said that the 2017 proposed budget for the agricultural sector did not provide details on how smallholder farmers would benefit from the promotion and development of the value chain of the various agricultural products.

“Hence, we cannot say smallholder farmers have been prioritised or will benefit from the allocations,’’ he added.

He, therefore, recommended that the proposed 2017 agriculture budget be revised to significantly support the growth of smallholder farmers, while spelling out how it would promote smallholder farmers’ productivity and wellbeing.

Nwokoye also urged the Federal Government to honour the Maputo Declaration by allocating 10 per cent of the total 2017 national budget to agriculture, taking into consideration the recovery and growth plans for the national economy.

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