Food crisis: Stakeholders identify ways to boost crop production

Stakeholders in the agricultural sector have identified the best agronomic support and mechanised services to boost food production in Nigeria.

The stakeholders include Pyrogenesys, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, Hello Tractor, Mobinet Group, and the University of Leicester UK.

Speaking at a press briefing organised by PyroPower Africa (ECA8 PPA2) Project Consortium on achieving sustainable energy and enhanced agricultural productivity in Abuja on Monday, Co-founder, & CEO, Pyrogenesys Ltd, Simon Ighofose identified post-harvest loss as one of the major causes of food crisis in Nigeria.

Ighofose explained that farmers lose about 50% of their produce but with the new technology, husk waste, especially from rice, can be converted into renewable electricity to support refrigeration that prevents them from losing 50% of their crop.

He added that with mechanised services, the same hectare of land that produces 5 tons can give 25 tons.

“So the farmers’ revenue in a single season of growing cassava could increase fivefold. Now, if you have a fivefold increase in food production in a single season, I think you are going to notice the impact on food production and food security in Nigeria.

“So we want to try and replicate that in rice, in maize, in tomato, in onions, in all of those things where we can show that we can increase production, reduce post-harvest losses, provide the infrastructure that helps the farmers either dry, refrigerate, or upgrade, semi-process their products, and get a higher return from higher quality and also higher yields,” he said.

The CEO noted that the use of pyrochemie, invented by Pyrogenesys, could convert combustible agricultural waste into fuel and generate renewable energy sources which could be upgraded into biofertiliser that can outperform imported inorganic NPK, which reduces their soil fertility.

“We’re creating an entire value chain, and that value chain has a lot of different actors. Nigeria, for instance, is the world’s largest producer of cassava.

“But we export the least because we eat most of it. The bioethanol industry is a global industry that is decarbonising petrol that goes into cars and bioethanol is a perfect industry for cassava and we have a bioethanol industry here in Nigeria,” he said.

The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) representative and Managing Director, Agric drive Ltd, Dr Daniel Willy, said they will support the project with mobilisation and training capacity of farmers.

“AATF brings two elements to the projects. One is mobilisation of the farmers who are involved in the production of the cassava so after we mobilise the farmers, we train them on good agronomic practices because we want them apart from supplying the biomass to also increase the yield of their tubers of Cassava so we train them.

“The second thing is we are playing mechanism services to these farmers because they need to produce in less drudgery approaches. So we mechanise their production. So those two elements are the ones who bring to the project,” he added.