When is the Right Time to Export Yam?

Since assuming office, Nigerians and indeed the world have observed the much labour the minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh has put in informing Nigerians of the need to pursue the export of some of the nation’s agricultural produce.

It is clear that the minister is a man in haste, and this is for obvious reasons. He has travelled long enough in this world to know some things about Nigeria; in these years, Chief Ogbeh has seen far too many opportunities frittered away. And in a sense, he perceives that the drop in oil revenue is not the calamity the people claim it to be, rather it presents a new window of opportunity for the nation in agriculture.

For a man who is a farmer, a minister in the second republic, was chairman of the largest political party in the continent, People’s Democratic Party and by a divine arrangement has found himself again in government as minister in charge of agriculture in a trying time as this; his cries are not those of a man lacking in understanding.

“Nigeria is owing N18 trillion in debt right now and 20% or so of that is foreign, the rest is local debt. How do you pay the foreign ones if you have no earnings in dollars? How do you import medicines and vaccines if you don’t have dollars?

“The argument that yams would be short is not true; 30% of the yams we grow rot away and we are the largest producers of yam in the world. The figure is not mine, it is that of the Food and Agricultural Organisation, FAO.”

Burdened by what is trending in the land, like many of those in government at this trying time, expressing frustration on account of the poor response of Nigerians to the urgent matters that need urgent attention, has not altered the reality of our circumstances.

The minister of agriculture has faced much barrage of criticisms since coming into office. This is understandable. Food is at the centre of human existence. And in Nigeria, in spite of the toga of a wealthy nation we wear, our reality is that, a good number of Nigerians are hungry.

Hunger and indebtedness are not the best combinations. They lead to frustration on everyone affected. In quick response to these demands, the minister is resolute in doing whatever he can to move the sector forward.

Exporting some tons of yams to countries where they are needed is a quick fix measure to earning scarce foreign exchange. As the minister explained, there are wastages even as it is, presently.

Ironically, exporting thousands and millions of tubers of yam is not an immediate panacea to the subject of food wastage. Wastage arise as a result of poor transport system, unavailable power which makes storage facilities across the country among the least developed among countries of our ranking; and years of policy somersaults and under investment in the area of processing, among others.  

The advantage that exporting yam and other produce gives us as a nation is the foreign exchange that is earned and which is capable of encouraging more production, attracting younger people into agriculture as a business and in the medium term, this is capable of attracting investment into the sector.

We must bear in mind that yam is not the only crop has a ready market and beckoning on Nigeria on the global arena. While we are rated as the highest producer of yam, we equally rate high in other crops like Cassava, Cashew, Soya, Potatoes, Cocoa, Maize, Sorghum, and the list goes on.

In most, if not all of these produce, we have done only a little export thus earned so little forex. Our past gains from oil was not plowed back into building infrastructure like power, transport system, modular technologies, etc; that could have led to a robust food processing and packaging industry.

It is with this hindsight that the minister of agriculture and those who think like him are insistent that Nigeria must start from where it is at the moment.

While the natural thought process would be to argue that the best time to start exporting yams and other staples would be after the need of Nigerians are fully met, this line of argument we must quickly settle in our minds, is wrong thinking.

Just as it is trite to think that the mostly post-harvest wastage that we record will suddenly vanish as soon we start exporting these produce, in the same way it is poor economics to think that we can only think of exporting any food item when the over 180 million Nigerians are fed in three square meals per day and there is a leftover.

Such day is utopian. As we know, even in the most advanced countries of the world where food is one of the cheapest items, we know that they still have the poor with them and they absorb most of their wastage through well-developed food processing industry.

So, when should be the ideal time to export Nigerian Yams, Cassava, Potatoes, Soya, etc.? The only right answer is NOW!

To show that we have delayed far too long to follow this path, we have symptoms of those wasted years in the form of youth restiveness across the country identified by different names.

We must arrest this development as we think export and it will in return lead us into thinking quality, processing and sufficiency will come thereafter.

 Let us export more, improve on the quality and plant more, then our sufficiency will increase. Until agriculture becomes attractive to younger Nigerians, we have not begun on the journey to food sufficiency. And export is one of the fastest drivers to this Eldorado.