Dr Ishaq Bello, the Chief Executive Officer of Milk Value Chain Foundation, has said Nigeria can’t end pastoralism at once, adding that it would take a while to phase out the old practice of rearing livestock.
Dr Bello disclosed this while speaking to journalists on the sideline of the daily value chain forum and a responsible business conduct workshop organised by the Milk Value Chain Association in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, in Abuja, on Tuesday.
He acknowledged that climate change was impacting cow rearing and milk production, saying one of the options available to farmers to mitigate this challenge was to end pastoralism.
He said: “There are several options, but one of the options is what was presented here by the Kaduna Market Development Management Company, where you’re going to have a farm estate having households, and they will be provided with cows, with pasture, with the houses.
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“So that way, they [cows] will stay in one place. That’s one of the options, but it’s also not possible to say, we stop pastoralism.
“It’s not going to stop in one day. It starts to take some time. But one of the ways is to encourage sedentary farming both by smallholder producers and commercial producers.
Dr Bello said the government has been supportive of the livestock farmers, providing the enabling policy that encourages production.
“The Federal Government has even created a ministry for livestock development, which is essentially focusing on livestock issues. So the government, both at the federal and state levels, are interested and are really active in making sure that there is success in dairy production,” he said.
Also speaking, Dr Abdu Umar Ardo, a partner in the programme, said the workshop is a collection of critical stakeholders that have key roles in the development of the dairy sector in Nigeria.
“As partners, we have a key pillar in the project. We are responsible for strengthening household capacity, in the area of aggressive community mobilization, advocacy, sensitization, training and retraining of the livestock farmers to ensure that they imbibe these very important projects that will enhance the production of milk, supply of milk along the dairy value chain, from the level of production, transportation up to marketing.
“So we have members that are really interested in improving their own lives and livelihoods. So we see this project as very timely and apt.”
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