FRI, JANUARY 19 2018-theG&BJournal- Sometime in 2004, I visited Zimbabwe. Yes, the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe. It was at the height of the British-inspired international sanctions against the country. As if the sanctions were also sanctioned by the almighty, the country was experiencing a drought. It had not rained in almost four years. From Harare, we drove through kilometers of the countryside and beheld acres and acres of lush green fields under cultivation. Zimbabwe is easily the food basket of the region and they take farming very seriously as we were to find out.
The country has gone beyond rain-fed agriculture that depended on the vagaries of nature to intensive irrigation system that enabled them to produce crops all year round. For them, farming is not about cultivating crops during raining season and waiting it out during the second half of the year. Thus they have overgrown the capacity limitations imposed by nature on farming. We were told that in summer for instance, they grew summer wheat and in winter, they grew winter wheat among many other crops. In addition, the farms were highly mechanized such that the farms were not being worked by hoe and cutlass-wielding poor folks but by fairly educated and informed farmhands who managed the farm machineries from tractors to the water sprinklers.
Then, we visited a cattle ranch, and saw that cattle being raised for beef is fed on a different variety of grass from the cattle being reared for milk. This was a product of agricultural research in which University of Zimbabwe had excelled. Indeed, we were to find out that it was compulsory for every Zimbabwean undergraduate in the University to take courses in agriculture for the first two years before majoring in whatever field of study. And it reflected in the people we interacted with at the farms. There was intense pride in their farming that elicited envy from us the visitors. One other lesson we took away from the ranch was the application of economics to cattle rearing. We were informed that by confining the cattle to the ranches, it was more efficient to grow the variety of grass best suitable for each set of cattle. In addition, the cattle are fed to grow weight. The meat is sold in kilogrammes which means that the heavier the cattle, the more revenue they could realize from its sale. However, cattle that range over long distances for grazing lose weight in the process of searching for grazing grass. Thus by confining the cattle to the ranches, they conserved their weight gain which translated to profits.
Our visit to a chicken farm was even more revealing. The grandparent stock, the parent stock, the layers and the broilers are separated by physical distances of not less than one kilometer due to concerns about bio-security and this is something that is scrupulously enforced by the government. Yes, the government enforces farming regulations very seriously, we were told. The species of chicken in the farm was called “Ross” and we were told that the motto of the farm was “ross is boss and boss is ross”. Whatever made ross better ruled the farm as everyone recognized that their employment and indeed overall wellbeing was tied to the wellbeing of ross. Once again, we were introduced to another interesting application of economics to the farming. The broilers are reared for meat which depended on their weight. The feeds were formulated to enhance and achieve precise weight gains and once that weight is achieved, the chicken had to be slaughtered as continuing to feed them after the attainment of the desired weight was a monetary loss.
In our interactions with government ministers and even the Vice President, I was struck by their enthusiasm for agriculture. No matter what the topic of discussion was, the talk invariably veered off to farming and you could notice the glint in their eyes as they described their farms, their crops and their harvests. Government ministers were obviously very proud to identify with their farming population and this percolated to the ordinary citizens.
As I reflected on the visit, I could not but compare with our own country. In Nigeria, farming is synonymous with poverty and holds no economic attraction. Nigeria is blessed with abundant arable land and plenteous water resources which together represent potential wealth through agriculture. All the factors seem to be in place to promote food production and create jobs for the teeming unemployed population. Despite this, the reality of the Nigerian situation is a nation where hunger stalks the land and acute unemployment is prevalent in the economy. Successive administrations have always expressed desires to make us self-sufficient in food production and create employment. Between the desire and actual outcome however is a wide gulf. I have come to the conclusion that we need to rebrand farming in Nigeria, so that people can perceive it as a business or enterprise from which wealth can be created if sensible management practices are deployed.
Listening to the Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s current Minister for Agriculture on Channels Television expounding on this theme and value chain development in agriculture recently,my hopes were renewed that in our country, perhaps, we can finally get it right. The initiatives to rebrand farming must therefore be sustained for us to attain food security in our land.
Odua Clement T. Ofuani first published in June, 2012 economics of agriculture including cattle rearing by ranching
