ibironkeeniola The Regional Head of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), Dr. Issoufou Abdourhamane has urged the Nigerian government to cut down on the importation of cowpea, in order to save billions of naira.
Dr. Abdourhamane who made this charge in Abuja, said, “Nigeria is the biggest importer and producer of cowpea in Africa and the world. If Nigeria can cut down importation by 20 or 30%, it will be saving the country, hundreds of millions of Naira annually. If you look at it, it is billions you are talking about.”
The AATF regional head noted that with mechanized farming and intervention in crops like cowpea, cassava, and currently rice which is underway, Nigeria can be sure of food security from that perspective.
While reiterating the role of AATF in ensuring food security across Africa, he said, “AATF is an organization which focuses on some constraints faced by smallholder farmers usually because in Sub-Saharan Africa, we don’t have large producers. Most of our producers are the small holder farmers but there are also many challenges to agricultural production.”
Dr. Abdourhamane singled out mechanization as one of these challenges facing the sector, adding that the challenges could be overcome by solving them successively, so as to improve food production and sufficiency in the country.
In his words, “one of the key components of cassava production is drudgery, how much labour it takes to plant, weed and harvest cassava because cassava is a shrub. We had to show people that solution exists, the cassava mechanization development going on in collaboration with the National Mechanization Centre is having very good success and impact.”
He further said that the farmers were trained on effective weeding, insect pest control on cassava and how to improve soil fertility.
The Regional Head added that “as a result of the AATF cassava mechanization, they were able to multiply the yield from eight to more than 30 tonnes per hectare and this is a real success story.”
“Cowpea is a big cash crop and scientists in Africa in the late 80s found out that the limiting factor in the field was `Maruca podborer’, an insect pest of the commodity. So since then, people have been trying to develop resistant variety cowpea, unfortunately, cowpea naturally doesn’t have any resistance.”
“The development of biotechnology in late 80s and early 90s showed that there is a way because BT Cotton, BT Maize and BT Soybeans have been very popular and successful in the U.S. They were able to develop the BT Cowpea after difficult challenges, which will help boost the production of cowpea because we can double the yield of cowpea.
“We can do that easily if maruca is the challenge and in the area of maruca challenge, we can easily double the yield. By doing this, not only do we improve food production, we’ve improved protein content,” he added.
SOURCE: AGRONIGERIA