In 2005, the then Kwara State Governor, Senator Bukola Saraki, started the “Back-To-Farm” project. This project was intended as a mechanism to increase and improve the participation of citizens and residents of Kwara State in agriculture. Till date, three major events have happened in that direction; (1) the establishment of Shonga Farm by the Bukola Saraki regime, (2) the launching of Kwara State Agriculture Master Plan (KAMP), by the Abdulfatah Ahmed regime, and (3) the signing of an MoU (70 billion Naira worth) with some Spanish (and Dutch) rice investors, also by the Abdulfatah Ahmed regime. These three events have comfortably painted Kwara State as an “agrarian state” for the last two successive governments have made efforts to make it so.

The focus of this discussion is not on the successes or the failures of these aforementioned efforts, because I don’t have access to reliable information about how they have fared, and I don’t want to rely on online news reports on them to draw conclusion(s). I would rather focus on alternative but simpler route/model to making Kwara an agrarian state. The intention of this effort is to generate healthy discussion on how to make Kwara State an agrarian state.

Understanding the historical background of agriculture in Nigeria should lead us to the right policy direction. My independent studies on the history of agriculture in Nigeria have shown that, the past achievements Nigeria made in agriculture were as a result of great investment into research (we had over 10 focused research institutions) and great support from government in providing structure and policies. There were also complementing commodity trading platforms that bring buyers (mostly exporters) and sellers (farmers and middle-men).

Most of the farmers in the 1960s, when Nigeria had domination in supplying the world palm oil, groundnut, cocoa, and cotton were peasant farmers who worked their farmlands with crude farm-tools and mostly practised bush fallowing. No fertilisers. No tractors. What they had was a combination sheer determination, hard work and focus. There was no electricity nor good roads nor proper irrigation (they simply cultivated seasonally). The growth Nigeria achieved in those years were “organic” – driven by the people while government provided the enabling environment.

Yes, the world has advanced in knowledge, science and technology. However, the underlying path to success remains the same – hard work, dedication, proper planning, focus, discipline, proper execution and so on.

If Kwara State wants to make its core competence, agriculture, and achieve the status of an agrarian state, it cannot talk its way through. A lot of work has to be done in creating policies, infrastructure and framework that will make the “common man” the driver of the agricultural revolution the state seeks. I don’t want to believe our people do not want to farm anymore. What I believe, is that, there is no incentive to encourage them to do so. The major desire of a businessman is the availability of a willing, ready and able buyer of his/her merchants. And this is anchor upon which the government has to hinge its policies on agriculture.

RESEARCH

Kwara does not really have to do much research into the science of agriculture (crop improvement, soil enhancement and so on) at the moment, because there are a lot of breakthroughs that have been made by our research institutions that have not been yet implemented. Therefore, its research focus should be on how to make the Kwara people drive its vision in agriculture. This, again, is not costly. What the government needs is to gather people who can come up with simple and implementable ideas that would put an average man at the centre of action of the processes leading to delivering its vision in agriculture, just like I have intended to do with this article.

CREATION OF THE MARKETPLACE

Kwara State, through its investment company, Harmony Holdings Limited (HHL), should develop at least one “agrocentric” industrial park in each local government area within the state. These parks would focus on processing into semi-finished products or finished products, the major agricultural outputs from Kwara State. Some of which are cotton, cocoa, palm produce, coffee, kola nut, tobacco, corn, cassava, rice, sorghum, cashew nut, and so on – all these have strong local and international markets.

These industrial parks do not have to be big. They could be designed to accommodate between 10 to 20 companies – a mixture of cottage processing companies, packaging companies, storage and warehousing companies, and logistics companies.

There are small and medium food processing companies in Asia and Middle-East that would be willing to subscribe to these parks and set-up their plants there. Our population and our over reliance on imported food items are good marketing points for the industrial parks. And Kwara State can and should in fact take the lead the process of increasing Nigeria’s agricultural industrial base. All what the state needs is to properly handle all the stages of the project and properly market it to the world.

INFRASTRUCTURE

To make these industrial parks attractive to investors, complementing infrastructure must be built. Roads must lead to and from them, there must be constant electricity supply, water must be there, and telecommunication infrastructure must be built. The locations of these industrial parks should be such that, they are within a maximum of 100km reach to every village in the state. And the state government has to work extensively in linking every community within the state to these parks by providing good roads, thereby giving farmers easy access to them.

Private power companies would readily partner with HHL to deliver electricity and water to the industrial parks (and their environments) if HHL is able to get agro-allied processing companies to subscribe to putting their facilities in the industrial parks. It is all about structuring the idea to attract serious industry players to desire wanting to be part of the development.

Harmony Holding Limited (HHL) can itself set-up a commodity buying company that buys of the crops from the farmers and sell to the end-users, this has a dual function of stabilising pricing and instilling confidence in the farmers and the processing companies.

Apart from the attendant job creation (direct and indirect) that these industrial parks would bring, they would also lead to knowledge and technology transfer.

EDUCATION & AWARENESS

The workings of this concept must be properly communicated to all relevant stakeholders – most importantly the Kwara people. Therefore, the government, through relevant agencies would have to invest adequately in educating the people on how this model works, on how the government intends to protect their labour and making it worthwhile, by providing a structure that buys their harvests from them with decent profit margin. This will definitely encourage people to go back to farm – in the short-, medium-, and long-term – when they start seeing results.

The state should carry out findings to determine the tons of each crop (rice, corn, cassava and so on) produced in the state annually and its expandable capacity. This kind of information would encourage the prospective processing companies to make decision about their investment, as availability of raw material is an important consideration for manufacturing.

FUNDING & IMPLEMENTATION

Kwara State is one of those states that are low earners – low federal allocation and low Internally Generated Revenue (IGR is about NGN 800 million monthly). The state has always been generally regarded as a “civil-servants’ state” except for the recent past when decent commercial activities started springing up.

However, Kwara State has always had good relationship with financial institutions and therefore should be able to structure a deal to get funds to pursue these kind of projects if the government wants to.

The implementation of this kind of project should be phased and long-term in nature. Its vision and focus should be back by legislation to ensure its implementation and sustainability. The idea is to pick one or two local governments as its pilot scheme and implement. Proper monitoring of progress and documentation of lesson-learnt at each stage of the project, meticulously done.

CONCLUSION

It is good to dream big and bring big industry players to Kwara State to participate in our agricultural industry; however, that cannot engender participatory nor organic growth, wherein the “common-man” is an active player and beneficiary. Good policies should be all-inclusive.

PS: THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED ON MY BLOG (http://jidezubair./2014/11/04/kwara-state-as-an-agrarian-state/) ON 04/11/2014. I BROUGHT IT HERE TO GET PEOPLE'S OPINION ON SAME.