Agric research as missing link in Nigeria’s quest for improved food production

BY ONOME AMUGE

Despite the invaluable role of research institutions in Nigeria’s agriculture system, the research sector loses about $100 million every year as a consequence of the inability of research scientists and other stakeholders engaged in the research value chain to attract grants from local and foreign foundations and organisations.

Olufemi Oladunni, executive director, Agriculture and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI), made the remark during the recently concluded workshop on grantsmanship for agricultural research officers hosted by the institute in Ilorin, Kwara State.

According to Oladunni, grantsmanship, which is the fund needed to conduct agric research, is not what the government alone can provide as there are some foundations all over, even outside Nigeria who are ready to give out funds, but this has proved challenging due to lack of fundable research proposals in the agricultural sector.

“Nigeria is not losing anything below a $100 million grant every year due to inability to attract both local and foreign grants. And you know what that can do in the research system only in agriculture,” Oladunni said.

“When you extend this and look at the value chain for research, there are lots to gain by research scientists among other actors along the research value chain that are losing this opportunity,” he said.

Oladunni noted that though Nigeria is predominantly an agrarian country, commodities such as crops, livestock, fisheries and agro-forestry produced in the country remain far below international output. Nigeria’s insufficient production, he explained, points to the fact that the country needs to develop agricultural research to improve food production, reduce food shortages as well as create jobs for the teeming populace.

He explained that agric research is primarily targeted at improving farmers’ understanding of food production systems, improving technology for increased/quality yield, and implementation of analysis and solutions to challenges in agriculture productivity.

“That’s the essence of having research institutes and faculties of agriculture in our tertiary institutions because agric research is not meant for research institutes alone. Every participant is supposed to be involved,” he said.

Economic analysts consider agricultural research a significant concern of developing countries such as Nigeria, being that many of the new technologies, inputs, and techniques of production that increase agricultural productivity are produced and developed through agricultural research.

According to the Nigeria Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR), agricultural research is a substantial process through which researchers generate, disseminate and impart improved agricultural technologies for enhanced crop production and utilisation to achieve national self-reliance in food and industrial raw materials and have surplus for export.

In this regard, a well-developed agricultural research system is seen as a major factor for sustainable agricultural intensification towards meeting the food requirements of continually expanding populations and a key contribution to global economic growth.

Nigeria currently has a vast network of prominent agricultural research organisations including International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS), National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI), Lake Chad Research Institute (LCRI), National Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), among others, regulated by the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN). The country also has a significant number of universities and other academic institutions engaged in agricultural research spread across its geopolitical zones.

However, challenges such as limited resources and investments, lack of clearly defined research priorities, weak basic research outcomes, shortages of well-trained scientific and technical staff, absence of appropriate communication strategies and connection with farming communities and stakeholders in the agriculture value chain have consequently plagued the development of the country’s agriculture research system.

Ambrose Alikidon Voh, an agriculture researcher and professor of animal production, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in an article contained in the Nigerian Agricultural Policy Research Journal (NAPReJ), noted that the nominal funding of research has improved over the years but still remains inadequate because most of the increases are in the area of personnel and not the actual research sub-heads.

He added that research funding is also erratic and untimely most of the time, with no evidence of adequate consideration of the time-bound nature of research activities in most policy decisions.

Citing data from the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI), Voh noted that Nigeria has one of the lowest agricultural research spending intensities with decadal of 0.4 percent, 0.27 percent and 0.35 percent in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, respectively, instead of the 1-2 percent requirement as a percentage of agricultural GDP.

This funding constraint, he explained in the article titled “Challenges and experiences of Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) in making agricultural research work for end-users in Nigeria”, makes it difficult for research to be responsive to the needs of its clientele and compounds the challenge of long gestation of research, serving as a discouragement to agric researchers.

Voh also identified lack of well-trained researchers, inadequate research infrastructures and poor management of the agricultural research and development system as some of the constraints to maximisation of agricultural research in Nigeria.

Commenting on the challenges affecting agric research in Nigeria, Abiodun Adeloye, dean, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ilorin, explained that though researchers in the agriculture research-based universities have capacities to produce research results that would drive innovations in the agriculture and food processing sector, most of the researches have been poorly funded, thereby discouraging researchers from conducting projects that could have helped in improving the agriculture sector.

According to Adeloye, the private sector should support researchers to keep farmers in touch with the latest technological innovations and knowledge in the agriculture industry. He noted, however, that the private sector hasn’t been very supportive of agriculture research and that many of the companies have failed to engage universities and research institutes to solve farming challenges.

Boosting agric research to attract funding

Following his assessment of the economic potential of agricultural research, Oladunni, the executive director of the Agriculture and Rural Management Training Institute, said the institute deemed it necessary to contribute its own quota to developing the skills, knowledge and research competence of the nation’s agriculture scientists to make them develop better quality and high-yielding varieties to improve food security in Nigeria.

According to Oladunni, 50 participants at the training programme were drawn from across research institutes in the country.

“Almost every research institute in the country is represented and faculties of agriculture around us and outside here, including our own staff are involved,” he added.

Ishaku Leo Elisha, one of the participants and assistant director, National Veterinary Research Institute, Vom, Plateau State, expressed delight regarding the impact of the training to the development of agric research and how researchers can be more positioned to getting better funding.

He added that the participants would collaborate through networking among themselves to spread the knowledge garnered during the programme towards making the training worthwhile.

Voh, in his recommendations for a more investment-friendly agric research sector, called for improved linkages between research and the various stakeholders, emphasising that multiplicity of extension strategies is required to link the various actors with the agricultural sector.

“It should be noted that the success of investment in agricultural research is heavily dependent on both the quality of the research and the strength of the links between research and extension providers. The extension system must be complementary to the research system and not compete with it,” he stated.

Voh also suggested vibrant reward systems for researchers for innovations and linkage activities. According to him, researchers at the research institutes spend part of their time in some lessons of knowledge and technologies transfer and as such, need incentives to encourage greater participation of researchers in technology transfer. This, he noted further, is a channel for effective generation and diffusion of agricultural innovations in selected agricultural commodity value chains.

He also noted that improving the relevance and responsiveness of research to clients, and making the institutional base for agricultural research more pluralistic, will increase chances of funding for research by international and national research centres.