Agribusiness players, including the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Commercial Dairy Ranchers Association of Nigeria, have urged the newly established Ministry of Livestock Development to address food insecurity.
President Bola Tinubu approved the creation of the Livestock Development Ministry on July 9, 2024, as he inaugurated the Presidential Committee on Livestock Reforms at the State House, Abuja.
Chairman of the Agro-allied group, LCCI, Kola Aderibigbe said that President Bola Tinubu’s creation of a Ministry of Livestock Development was a wonderful idea, but farmers needed to see a plan for how the ministry would solve the country’s food crisis, according to The Punch.
Aderibigbe said, “It is a welcome development. It will add to the dairy farm industry and create more opportunities. But we need to see what is in the pipeline for the ministry.”
He mentioned that farmers were still insecure and that they wanted the ministry to create a way for them to return to their farms and begin producing food.
However, the chairman of the LCCI Agro-allied Group raised concerns about the increased cost of working with the Livestock Development Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture for integrated farmers.
“What about integrated farming? Some people integrate their crop farms with livestock. That means you will have to deal with two agencies, which will cause confusion and certifications will become costly,” he said.
He expressed worry about the specifics of the solution the Ministry of Livestock Development would bring to the farmer-herders clashes that have prevented many farmers from optimally using their farmlands.
Aderibigbe noted his disappointment with how no headway was made with the ranching option for the open-grazing debate.
He hoped that the new government program would neither be politicized nor result in the conversion of private land property to grazing.
He argued that contemporary ranching tactics may effectively harness the country’s multibillion-dollar dairy agricultural economy.
Meanwhile, the l President of CODARAN, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar, who is also the CEO of L&Z Integrated Farms, said it would need more than a department in the Ministry of Agriculture to realize the potential of dairy farming, as well as other livestock outputs.
He noted that the objective of the Dairy Ranchers Association was to meet national demand for dairy products, thereby cutting down on the country’s reliance on imports, which in 2023, amounted to $1.5bn annually, according to the National Biotechnology Development Agency.
He said, “Meeting the national demand (for dairy products) and stopping imports would take years before the excess would be imported. There is a real need for a ministry to drive this.”
Abubakar, a member of the Presidential Committee on Livestock Reforms, stated that poultry farmers’ concerns were represented in the discussions that led to the establishment of the Livestock Development Ministry.
Recall that the Poultry Association of Nigeria had stated that over 30% of poultry farms in Nigeria had closed in the last six months due to high operating costs, which had led to the dramatic spike in market egg prices.
