The National President, National Cashew Association of Nigeria, NCAN, Dr Ojo Ajanaku, has alleged that those behind the Bill seeking to ban raw materials export in the agricultural sector want to cripple the nation’s cashew industry in order to force cashew farmers sell their cashew nuts cheaply to local processors instead of exporting them. In an interaction with Sunday Vanguard, Ajanaku asked the National Assembly not to pass the Bill as he argued that the Bill, if passed into law, will jeopardize the Nigerian cashew industry and throw farmers into a precarious situation. Meanwhile, he suggested that the government should rather come up with what he called Special Agro-processing Loan, SAPL, that would be accessible by processors at about three to five per cent interest rate in order to attract investors into cashew processing instead of banning the raw export of cashew nuts. Excerpts: On Nigeria’s agricultural value chains and exports The National Cashew Association of Nigeria, NCAN, is a statutory appellate body representing Nigeria’s cashew industry, and by the virtue of my position today as the National President of the Association, I am a critical stakeholder because I have the millions of Nigerians that I am speaking on behalf of them. I can tell you that the Nigerian cashew industry is employing over 50 million Nigerian citizens today. That is when we talk about the value chains but the chunk of this 5 million Nigerians are the farmers. Nigeria as a country has about 92 million hectares of land, and what we have maybe used in terms of living as habitat and all other activities, we still have over 30 million hectares of land non-farm, and this is where we have all the criminals habiting because they have their hideout places in these places where no farms exist. Meanwhile, the entire land of Ivory Coast is 32 million hectares of land, they produce cashew by record more than us including cocoa, but the same 32 million hectares of land is lying fallow as non-farm land in Nigeria. And the Federal Government of Nigeria, under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, has been promoting agricultural diversification and poverty alleviation agenda to drive agriculture, and that is why we have the National Agriculture Development Fund, NADF, money is channelled there to see that we promote agriculture in Nigeria. Nigeria today is about 250 million in population, and it is predicted that in another 20 or 30 years, we will be among the four largest populated countries in the world because of the reproduction in terms of giving birth to children in Nigeria. Nigeria is so blessed that all our lands are fertile lands across the nation, and this propaganda going on everywhere, talking about restriction and restriction, I see it as politically sponsored and motivated. Nigerian politicians should stop using the lives of Nigerians for politics. They should stop politicizing human life in Nigeria because I see this agenda as people against Tinubu’s agricultural diversification and poverty alleviation program. Why do I say so? Government should not be seen to have policy inconsistencies; you are at the other hand, promoting agriculture, and at the same time you are the other one promoting another policy going against poverty alleviation. The baseline of agriculture are the producers. Please let us be clear here, that agriculture is business in itself, and it should be taken as a business. Agriculture has more employees than the people who call themselves secondary processors. I call them secondary processors like for my cashew, which I represent. When the farmer harvests his cashew from the farm, it goes through processes of processing before it gets into export. They sort, sun-dry, baggage, before you put it for export. Those are primary processors. Now, the secondary processor is like for cashew, is sharing. You share it and bring out the kernel out of it. In India, when they wanted to go into cashew processing, they started with local machineries. That was what India started from. Those are the areas I expected the Raw Materials Research and Development Council to look at because they are under the Ministry of Science and Technology instead of chasing shadows, looking for policy to control export of raw material. The core component of processing is not under the raw material. Cost of funding is a big challenge. We have most of our products in Nigeria as seasonal products. Cashew harvest starts in Nigeria between February and maximum of April or May, harvesting is finished. Now what you have is the product that you have prepared for export or prepare for processing. On cashews demand patronage with govt supporting processors It means to say that the processors in Nigeria will have to store what they will process for 300 days of the year. They have to store the produce all through the year. Is it with the interest rate of 34 per the banks are giving to farmers that you can store goods for processing all through the year, when our counterparts in other countries are issuing loans of less than five and three per cent to promote industrialization in their own country, and now we are going reverse in our own country. So what drives industrialization is not the raw material only but it is incentives. Energy incentives. For instance, if you have what we call Special Agro-processing Loan SAPL, which I have gathered banks, even engaged NEXIM Bank and Fidelity Bank to come up with a Product Paper for cashew because of the high cost of interest rate and to bring down the cost of processing for our processors so that they can compete with the outside world and encourage production in Nigeria. On how cashew farms can generate over 30,000 jobs per 10,000 hectares Imagine a processor taking just taking 10,000 hectares of land and farm it is a huge avenue created to generate over 30,000 jobs. For one hectare of land, for you to be able to farm one hectare of land and make it productive for cashew, you need minimum of three to five hands to work for you in that farm. Now, if a processor takes 10,000 hectares of land to farm cashew, if he employs three persons, we are looking at 30,000 employees. With the cost of production today in Nigeria, we still employ not less than 2,500 people that tells you the number of cashew farmers we have today in Nigeria. NCAN has been able to collect data so far on the number of hectares cashew is being cultivated, which is about 358,000 hectares of cashew trees that Nigeria is currently producing from.