Adesina urges Oshiomhole to leverage on ADB

NaijaAgroNet 
 
The former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina  has urged the Edo State Governor, Adams  Oshiomhole to play  politics well,  by leveraging on his  growing relevance at the continental level as the new head of the biggest development financial institution in Africa, NaijaAgroNet reports.

Adeshina said this while reacting to the Governor’s position that the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) of the immediate past administration was a big scam.

According to information from ministry of Agriculture’s website, Adesina who is currently the president of Africa Development Bank (AFDB), contended that Oshiomole’s claim was “lacking in depth, sound logic and was a calculated attempt to rubbish everything about Goodluck Jonathan’s administration under whose leadership, he was able to perform so creditably.”

His special assistant on media, Dr Olukayode Oyeleye, NaijaAgroNet gathered, said the former agriculture minister regretted that the claim was a bad public relations stunt, not expected from the governor, adding that it was even so when it is considered that Oshiomole’s comments detract from the ATA, a reform that was vigorously pursued and implemented by Dr Akin Adesina.

Oyeleye said it was “uncharitable and against the interest of Nigerian public to politicize issues of agriculture and food security as Governor Oshiomhole did in his criticisms of that sector.

“Nigerians know better and will not allow this governor’s attempt to reinvent the wheel or publicity stunt to derail what is perhaps the most ambitious and successful agricultural blueprint since Nigeria’s independence. He ought to have been asking, for instance, the erudite, resourceful and hardworking former minister, how he was able to achieve so much within so short a time.”

Adesina , NaijaAgroNet learnt, observed that at a time that the nation desperately needed to build upon his achievements as agriculture minister, Oshiomole could only do the Edo people some good by recognizing the fact that lending by commercial banks to agriculture increased from 0.07 per cent in 2011 to five per cent in 2014, while banks lent a total of N27.5 billion to fertilizer and seed companies.

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 Pix:Dr Akinwumi Adesina  

NACCIMA calls for industries protection against ECOWAS’s CET

NaijaAgroNet

The Director-General, Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), Mr. Emmanuel Cobham, has advocated protection of local industries in the wake of the implementation of the ECOWAS Common External Tariff (CET).

NaijaAgroNet reports that NACCIMA‘s position on the policy is that manufacturing companies need some level of protection against the influx of foreign products that the tariff favours. Cobham said since the CET regime has commenced, government may need to consider ways by which the hardship on importers and manufacturers alike could be alleviated.

He stated this in response to a World Bank report, ‘Connecting Food Staples and Inputs in West Africa: A Regional Trade Agenda for ECOWAS countries,’ calling on Nigeria and other governments in West Africa to move beyond nationally-focused food policies and address regional trade within ECOWAS to link farmers with consumers in the region’s booming urban areas, NaijaAgroNet gathered.

“Food staples belong at the heart of the ECOWAS agenda on agriculture,” said World Bank senior economist and lead author of the report, Jean-Christophe Maur. He said the importance of cross-border cooperation to secure food supply, as well as manage common natural resources, regional diseases and security challenges, has been made painfully clear in recent years, calling for a new  commitment to regional trade in the West African 

Sub-region to accelerate agricultural production, boost growth and ensure food security.
The report obtained by The Nation builds on the lessons of the World Bank report, “Africa can help feed Africa,” and examines the specific circumstances in West Africa, which is home to one-third of the continent’s population, and bringing new analysis to the food staples trade and policies in the region.

The report regretted that though Africa has tremendous agriculture potential with more than half of the world fertile yet unused land, countries on the continent are increasingly dependent on food imports from the rest of the world, NaijaAgroNet reports.

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SADC: Zambia, Tanzania announce surplus cereals

NaijaAgroNet

The Special Assistant for Press and Public Relations to the Zambian President, Edgar Lungu,  Amos Chanda, has said that only Zambia and Tanzania had a surplus reserve of cereals in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Chanda was addressing Journalists after the SADC Heads of State’s summit, Monday, where they discussed the danger of starvation due to cereal deficit, poor rainfall pattern during the 2014/2015 farming season and the required interventions in terms of relief in the form of maize and cereal supplies..

"When an analysis of food security was done in the SADC region, only Zambia and Tanzania were found to have positive food balance sheet, in terms of cereal surplus," he said.

He also said SADC chairperson and Botswana President Lieutenant General Ian Khama expressed concern over the power deficit in the region and called for non-hydro based sources of energy, even as the 35th SADC summit ended with a call from the chairperson to implement agreed priorities in strategic plans in order to improve the well-being of citizens,  
NaijaAgroNet gathered.

In his closing remarks, Gen Khama said the summit adopted important decisions that cut across sectors which were necessary to implement in good time saying that he recognized the continued support of the regional developmental cooperating partners (ICPs) for their immense contribution and urged them to continue with their support towards regional industrialization.

According to a communiqué released after the summit, member states signed legal protocols among them to continue implementing the regional agriculture policy and relevant protocols in order to improve agricultural production and food security.In area of climate change, summit underscored the need for the region to continue to work with all progressive partners and strive to build consensus on a continental basis.

The summit, NaijaAgroNet learnt, also noted the significant improvement in the security situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and also called upon the Government of Madagascar and all political key stakeholders to safeguard achievements made in the nation building and reconciliation by fully implementing the SADC roadmap.

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Pix: The Zambian President, Edgar Lungu, 

NCRRI, others plan genetically modified cassava for Africa

 NaijaAgroNet

The National Crops Resources Research Institute (NCRRI) in Uganda and Kenya and other research agencies are currently  developing cassava varieties under a collaborative project termed ‘virus resistant cassava for Africa,’ NaijaAgroNet reports.

The project which also involves Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization, and the Donald Danforth Plant Centre, is aimed at developing cassava varieties that are not only resistant to viruses but also preferred by farmers. When supported and released, these cassava varieties have the potential of saving farmers preferred varieties which had been abandoned because they were susceptible to cassava brown streak disease.

An agriculturist, science writer and an advocate on science-based interventions in solving agricultural challenges in developing countries, Isaac Ongu, said farmers are not only looking for resistant cassava but cassava with the familiar taste that they and their children have always eaten and enjoyed.

Genetic engineering, he said, has a great potential to preserve farmers’ desirable traits with minimum variation compared to conventional breeding that always register marked differences in tastes and texture of cassava. This project, NaijaAgroNet gathered, is not only trying to deliver resistant cassava but could rescue farmers’ preferred varieties that have been abandoned because of the viruses.

Scientists are improving cassava because of its potential in guaranteeing household food security as well as its potential as an industrial raw materials in brewery, bakery, fuel and pharmaceuticals. Anti GMO activists too are resisting biotech cassava because of its potential to deflate the balloon of lies surrounding GM crops. They are frankly scared that the new GM cassava with its focus of preserving farmers preferred traits stands a high chance of being adopted by several households — if it’s not blocked.

Anti GMO activists have intentionally twisted the fact that intercropping would work well with most genetically modified crops and misinform and scare farmers, alleging that all GM crops cannot be intercropped. One of the crops they are targeting is genetically modified and nutritionally enhanced cassava, which has been tweaked to be virus resistant, protecting Africa’s most important staple against two of the most virulent cassava viruses in Africa, the cassava brown streak disease and cassava Mosaic disease.

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Pix: Isaac Ongu