College
graduate Omatayo Adeniyi stands in a humid tropical forest of southwest Nigeria
and explains why he chose cocoa farming over a white collar job in the city.
“There
is money in the ground. The future is bright. I hope to make one tonne of cocoa
by next year,” he says from his farm in Ondo State.
Such
optimism has for decades been rare among Nigeria’s cocoa farmers: Many
abandoned their fields and moved to cities in search of alternative work after
commodity prices collapsed in the mid-1980s and the country’s booming oil
industry siphoned investment away from agriculture.
But
years of focus on oil revenues has left Nigeria with a lack of
industrial
diversity and made it over-dependent on energy, which uses a lot of costly
equipment but employs few people. So while the economy has been growing at an
average of 7 percent for the past five years, it has failed to create jobs for
many of Nigeria’s 170 million people.
High
unemployment and poverty levels have prompted the government to look again at
cocoa with the aim of getting more people to grow a product for which prices
have been rising.
Adeniyi’s
trees have been supplied by the government, which is also distributing plant
pods and disease resistant seeds at subsidised rates, alongside cheap
fertilisers, agricultural chemicals and training to improve practices.
Agriculture
Minister Akinwumi Adesina aims to boost production to 1 million tonnes a year
by 2018 – on a par with current number two global producer Ghana and
approaching top grower Ivory Coast’s projected 1.8 million tonnes for this
year.
Nigeria
says it’s already on track to produce 500,000 tonnes of cocoa next year, double
what it grew in 2012, and though analysts say that target may be optimistic, it
is clear that no other cocoa growing country is boosting production as fast.
Output
from Africa’s top four growers – Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia and Nigeria –
which makes up over 70 percent of global production, is projected to rise in
2013/14 after staying flat for two years, according to Africa’s Ecobank.
“Nigeria
has been underperforming for many years because of a lack of investment and the
discovery of oil. But in the last two years, there’s been genuine commitment …
to develop agriculture,” said Edward George, Ecobank head of research.
BIGGER, BETTER, MORE
Nigeria
currently grows cocoa on less than a quarter of the 3 million hectares of land
suitable to produce the beans, and the government is encouraging farmers to
expand to the uncultivated savannah grassland.
With
the materials the state provides, crops are flourishing. Adeniyi received his
high-yield disease-resistant seeds from government two years ago and planted
800 seedlings of which 700 survived – much more than usual. The new trees
flower within 18-24 months instead of 3-5 years.
“The
materials will increase output more than three times from what farmers had
before,” said Leila Dongo, director at Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria.
However
infrastructure still poses a problem – bad roads hamper the transport of beans
to market – and many producers are at the mercy of the weather because of their
rudimental operations.
In a
leafy plantation where rows of cocoa trees sit three inches apart to let in air
and sunshine, farmer Rafiu Saliu demonstrates the problem. Picking up a pod
from a just-harvested heap he shows how most of it has gone black with fungal
disease.
Farmers
like Saliu rely on the whims of weather for growing and drying their crops.
This year Saliu faced a dilemma: leave pods on trees until the rains pass, and
risk them over ripening, or harvest them and risk mould levels exceeding the
maximum 5 percent allowed on the market.
“If
not for the rains we should be harvesting. All the pods are ripe,” said
65-year-old Saliu, as more dark clouds spread over his four hectare farm.
To
tackle this vulnerability, the government is training farmers to set up
warehousing and storage, including creating shared drying spaces covered with
plastic sheets that let sun in but keep rain out.
FROM TREES TO FACTORIES
When
Nigeria’s government turned its back on the cocoa industry, it also scrapped
the cocoa marketing board, a farmers’ cooperative that regulated farming
practices, guaranteed prices to farmers, and provided subsidies through the
cocoa board.
Farmers
now bear the price risk themselves but have seen cocoa prices swing from a low
of less than $1,000 per tonne in 1986 to a peak of $3,500 per tonne in 2011.
This month cocoa is trading around $3,252 per tonne.
In
Nigeria this year farmgate prices – the amount Saliu and Adeniyi will make on
their beans before they go to the wider market – are around 450,000 naira
($2,779) per tonne – up 50 percent on last year. But that could fall quickly if
as predicted a bumper West African crop depresses global prices.
So
in an attempt to avoid a cycle of boom and bust, Nigeria is encouraging local
processing and manufacturing enterprises.
Samuel
Oyebade, head of the government’s cocoa reform plan in its main growing region
Ondo State, told Reuters talks were afoot with U.S. chocolate manufacturer SPAGnVOLA
to set up a chocolate factory in which the state would invest around 5 billion
naira ($31 million) to build, while SPAGnVOLA would manage the production for
export and some local consumption.
Nigeria’s
beans have been deemed by the global market unsuitable for chocolate because of
their high moisture content and so tend to be used more in cake, butter and
soaps.
But
with expert input from a U.S. chocolate expert their beans could yet make it to
premium buyers, for premium prices.
“The
industry says cocoa beans from Africa are inferior to those from South America
and the Caribbean … (but) it’s how you treat that beans that renders the
flavour … every single tree has the potential for producing fine flavour,”
SPAGnVOLA Chief Executive Eric said.
Reuters
No comments:
Post a Comment