Spain: Agriculture Infrastructure in Nigeria Significantly Underdeveloped

The Chief Executive Officer, Pandagric Novum Limited, Mr. Bruce Spain, in this interview with THISDAY shares his thoughts on the rising cost of poultry feeds in the country and his plan to become number one choice producer of poultry feeds in Nigeria.  Gilbert Ekugbe brings the excerpts

According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), agri-food systems are failing because of drought, flood, COVID-19, insecurity, etc. What is your thought on these as they affect global food security? The agricultural infrastructure in the country is significantly underdeveloped. This leads to enormous challenges within the value chain and the agricultural industry. One challenge is low yields. Low yields are not a result of the climate because Nigeria has fantastic rainfall and good heat units. It is mainly because of the available plant genetics and general farming practices implemented in the country. Another challenge is commodity market stability, which leads to enormous unpredictable swings in commodity availability and price in the market. This is because of the fragmentation and lack of formalisation in the trading space. Once we move towards improved data availability across the industry and adopt formalised platforms that farmers can gather information from, we will notice predictability in the market. The risks around food security are not necessarily a result of COVID or drought. It is around having the right genetics and right farming practices within the agriculture space and moving towards formalisation of the buying and selling of commodities. Finally, the road and transport infrastructure across the country are severely hampered, due to the tough economic state of the country. The road networks in the rural areas are underdeveloped, which means that majority of the commodities from the farms are brought on small vehicles or motorbikes which is an inefficient way of transportation because there are no centralised aggregation points. There are small markets where farmers bring their produce and it gets aggregated in a small way. The produce moves on to a larger market and is aggregated in a larger manner before it gets to the final consumers. In this process, the produce is transported multiple times on different-sized vehicles which add costs to the actual logistics part of the commodity pricing. This makes the commodities quite expensive and leads to food insecurity.

You will agree that Nigeria’s food import cost is quite huge at $22 billion annually. What advice can you give to the federal government to bring this down to the barest minimum? This is one of our key driving focuses at Pandagric because it is a value-adding area. As a country, we need to reduce imports and become net exporters of agricultural commodities with a focus on our yields. The yield is critical and it comes down to crop genetics, plant varieties, and improved farming practices. At Pandagric, we primarily farm and consume maize and soy. The national average for maize cultivation sits around about 1.5 tonnes per hectare or less. Our target is to achieve over 10 tonnes per hectare in the coming few years. However, if we can double our national average of maize from 1.5 tonnes per hectare to 3 tonnes per hectare using good genetics and good maize varieties, then we will double our output in a single year. Nigeria very quickly will become a net exporter of maize and create food security. In addition, we will reduce the amount of environmental impact associated with opening and farming more land, particularly focusing on improved genetics and improved registration of solid varieties. We can get those into the farming communities and start to see yields and agricultural output rise in Nigeria.

How vital is agricultural technology in addressing food losses? From an agro technology perspective, there are information technology apps, improved genetics technology, improved fertilization practices, and all other technologies, specifically, food waste management technology. Farmers often experience post-harvest losses where they do not have a guaranteed market and cannot immediately sell their farming produce, and thus, suffer degradation of product quality. Through information technology, we can create links for the farmers to have a guaranteed off take when he needs to sell and not when he is forced to sell. There are a lot of apps that create this digital market for farmers to link with buyers in a strong, cohesive manner. There are other technology schemes, like storage technologies that enable farmers to look after their commodities and avoid post-harvest losses.

Can you describe Nigeria’s poultry feed value chain, its challenges and prospects? When we think of the poultry feed value chain, the inputs are a key focus area. The challenges we face within the country across the value chain with relation to the production of high-quality feeds, sit primarily with the availability of raw materials, and pricing predictability. Over the last year, the price of feed increased by 100 per cent. This continually affects the upstream value chain, farmers’ production costs, and the ultimate price of poultry products that go into the market. There is also a challenge in the transportation networks in getting the finished feeds to the farmers. The general quality of feeds is another challenge. It is important that farmers adopt the appropriate hygiene and management practices to benefit from high-quality feeds. With these challenges come enormous opportunities. Pandagric has an opportunity to transform the lowest stream value chain through the work that we do. We focus primarily on raw materials. We have a large commercial farm where we invest significantly in understanding the right methods, protocols, and frameworks for achieving high yields on maize and soy, which are the core ingredients that go into feed. This will ultimately result in the improvement of the quality of the inputs that go into feed, couple with the possibility of cost reduction. We are investing significantly in feed technology. There are different types of feeds being produced in the country; some of reasonable quality and some of particularly poor quality. We do not want to increase the cost of feed but we want to make sure that farmers are receiving high-level performance feeds. By investing in research and working with local and international poultry specialists, we can formulate the feed suited to the Nigerian poultry farmer which makes them profitable and in the long run, it translates to industry growth. Thus, we do performance monitoring of our feed, look at how farmers grow their chickens and formulate diets to meet their farming practices to drive eventual cost-down and make feed and farming more affordable and profitable for the farmers.

What plans do you have in terms of product innovation and development? Pandagric works with international poultry specialists, as well as local specialists in Nigeria. With our international partners and specialists, we are aware of appropriate technologies and include them in the formulation and production of our own feeds. From a nutrition and feed formulation perspective, we are using international best practices. In addition, we work with feed milling technologies to make sure that we are producing in the most efficient possible manner.

How do you cope with competition and maintain customer loyalty? We do not necessarily worry about competition. Nigeria is a big country with over 200 million people. There is space for everyone to participate. We focus on our mission to be the number one choice producer of feeds. Our core strategy is to have the correct supply chain of raw materials, either from our own farm, throughout-grower farmers around us, or chosen suppliers who can supply the right quality because quality raw materials will result in a quality finished product. We focus on ensuring profitability for farmers and if we remain focused on these areas, farmers will naturally understand the value they get from using Supreme Feeds.

Where do you see Supreme Feeds in the next five years? We have a great vision for what we want to achieve in five years. Our key mission is to be the number one choice producer. So, we expect to be within the top five producers in Nigeria, but we aim to be the first choice for customers and poultry farmers that are commercial and profitability-focused. We want to support the commercial players in the poultry market because we know that they can fully extract the value that we offer from Supreme Feeds.

What were some of the outcomes of the recently concluded 2022 Distributors Conference? The conference was extremely successful. The Distributors’ Conference was our opportunity to recognize and appreciate those clients, distributors, and partners that have been with us over the last 12 months. During the conference, we expected to get some feedback from the market in terms of what our distributors want beyond consistency in quality and stability in the supply that we offer. Our strap line for the conference was ‘Partners for Growth’. So, we wanted to know how to aid their growth, whether through finance for working capital or capital expenditure, business technology or training through our existing networks. The feedback we received will be useful in shaping our strategy over the next 12 months.