DEPT: MARKETING
FACULTY: MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
COURSE TITLE: AGRICULTURE
MARKETING
COURSE CODE: MKT 463
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
Northern Nigeria Agricultural Fraud And Irrigation
Failure
CHAPTER TWO
A Wake –Up – Call
CHAPTER THREE
·
Ways of correcting the failures in our agricultural activities in
Nigeria
·
Multi-functionality and agricultural policies
·
Removing Protectionist
·
WTO trade discussions
·
References
CHAPTER ONE
(NORTHERN
NIGERIA AGRICULTURAL FRAUD AND IRRIGATION FAILURE)
Kano Nigeria
–The nation blessed with Africa’s largest oil
reserves and some of its most fertile lands leis a problem, it cannot feed its
140 million people, and relatively minor reductions in rainfall could set off a
regional food catastrophe, experts say.
Nigeria
was major Agricultural exporter before oil discovered off its coast in the 1970
But as it develop into the world’s eight- largest oil producing country , its
big farms and plantations were neglected. To day about 10 percent of Nigeria
agricultural output comes from inefficient small farms according to the World Bank,
and most farmers have little or no access to fertilizers, irrigation or other
modern inputs. Most do not even grow enough food to feed their own families. Nigeria has
become one of the world’s biggest importers of food staples, particularly rice
and wheat, both of which the country could potentially grow in large enough
quantities to be self- sufficient. Even with the imports, about 38 percent of
Nigerian younger then 5 suffer from moderate or severe malnutrition according
to UNICEF, while 65 percent of population ----- are what humanitarian
organization call “food insecure” they are to find that they have nothing to
eat.
When
increased variation in weather patterns, experts envisage for worse to come,
Nigeria is “high- stakes,” said Willian A. master,
associate head of Purdue university’s Department of Agriculture Economics and a
specialist in Agriculture in Africa “ Malawi successes or Zimbabwe failures are
small compound to what happen in Nigeria , “he said the people who have
suffered most from Nigeria’s unreliable agricultural output are its
impoverished neighbors.
In
2005 when Nigeria had a bad
harvest, traders imported grain from Niger
which borders Nigeria
to the north. The increased demand caused food prices to spike beyond what
locals in Niger could afford
aid organizations sent in food aid, but much of it was also bought up by
traders and directed to markets in Nigeria. Nutritional surveys
suggest that untold numbers of children died.
Aid origination say that they are now better
prepared for food shortages in Niger
and other countries around Nigeria,
but that Nigeria
itself remains problematic
Its economy
is so big and complex we can’t really get a handle on it,” one senior aid
official in the region said on the condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak to the media “the idea of a major drought or other disaster
in Nigeria
is almost too frightening for any one to contemplate.”
CHAPTER TWO
A WAKE –UP – CALL
In theory, Nigeria could
cope with a food emergency. The Government is supposed to have the capacity to
hold 300, 000 metric ford of grain in reserve but in practice many of the silos
for these grains have stand empty or are half- full.
“ At
best , the gout’s capacity is 500, 000 metric tons and that capacity is only
being half- utilized , said Guido Firetti, silo contractor who recently took
over the job of competing a 25, 000 – ton silo that has been under construction
for more than 15 years
For
many in Nigeria including some gout officials the global food crisis last year was a wake- up –call prices of imported
food soared, and the country panicked fearing food riots, the gout announced it
would spend 600 million to buy rice regardless of the price the plan was
quickly shelved when it become clear that gelling the imported foods to the
people who nodded it would take almost as long as the growing the food locally
the gout than shifted gears. The money for importing food was reassigned to
food self sufficient projects and occurring to Nigeria 2009 budget, the gout
spending on agriculture is settle increase the spike in world food prices the
world wide recession and the in oil prices have spurred the gout on said Salisu
Ingaw , the head of the national food reserve agency “ Now we have to become
more food self- sufficient,” Ingaw said embracing a small scale corruption is
the usual explanation for why their ostensibly “ rich “ nation remains so under
develop. But corruption is just the pure due specialist. Even the most corrupt
Nigeria gout invested in some infrastructure projects because they had so much
oil unearth, master suggested the problem is that so kittle of what they
invested in ended up working he said .
One
widely held misconception that Nigeria gout fell for master said is that big
farm ventures were inherently more productive that small ones unless they are
to be a link in a larger industrial process, he chances are high then will
fail,” he said “in most cases large industrial farms don’t have the necessary
flexibility one find in smaller family style farms”.
Nigeria
development economist Shuaibu Idris said government have transitionally seen
small scale farmers as backward, “but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a
peasant one –man proprietor farm as long as the farmer can learn to adapt to
new realities, small –scale farmers may need to form cooperatives to share to
the cost of farm machinery and to buy input at bulk prices, he said.
That
is also the conclusion recently embraced by the World Bank. In January, it
approved a new $150 million commercial Agriculture Development project in Nigeria
designed to support small-and medium scale farmers.
The World
Bank new project, which is in the form of a loan to the Government, will
improve rural roads for farmers to reduce high transport costs and provide them
with better storage facilities.
The
Good news is that Nigeria
has boundless agricultural potential. Of the 3.14 million irrigable hectares of
land in the country, the World Bank says only 7 percent is currently being
utilized. And though large tracts of farm land have been lost to
desertification more than half the countries estimated 98 million hectares of
arable land currently lie fallow.
“The
opportunities for our farmers are economics if only they were to get the right
institutional support, said Sabo Nanono, farmers association, “we could face
the entire lust African region, we could produce enough rice in just two or
three (or Nigeria’s (36) states to feed the nation and even to export”.
Some
how, the supply chain that feeds 140 million people keeps cranking along. The
country has not seen a major famine for meanly four decades, since the Biafran
civil was. But Nanono warned that it wouldn’t take much to send this vulnerable
country--- and region--- over edge.
“The
reality is that if the rains are bad throughout the region or the price of
inputs became unalterable, there could be massive food. Shortages, and neither
the government nor any other institution stands ready help. He said “then only
God could save us”.
David
Hecht’s report from Nigeria
is part of the food insecurity project, a joint initiative of the Pulitzer
center or crisis. Reporting and the project for under sold stones view Hecht’s
audio slideshow on the project here. A companion story airs on “The News hour
with Jim Lehrer “by special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazara. The food
insecurity web site is an interactive portal that features additional articles
on food issues that have appeared in. the post and other news outlets. The web
sit also gives users the opportunity to engage with journalist directly and to
post their own responses, in video and in print.
CHAPTER THREE
WAYS OF CORRECTING
THE FAILURES OF AGRICULTURE IN OUR AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES IN NIGERIA
(MULTIFUNCNALITY
IN AGRICULTURE)
Multifunctional
in Agriculture (often simply multi-functionality) refer to the numerous
benefits that agricultural policies may provide for a country or region.
Generally speaking multi-functionality refers to the non-trade benefits of agriculture,
which is benefits other than commerce and food production: these include in the
WTO definition of multi-functionality, environmental protection,
landscape-preservation, rural employment, and food security. These can be
broadly classified as benefits to society, culture, a national economy as a
whole, national security, and other concerns, for example, in addition to
providing food and plant derived products for the population, agriculture may
also provide jobs for rural people and contribute to the variability of the
area. Create a more stable food supply, and provide other desired environmental
and rural outputs.
Multi-functionality
and agricultural policies
The
numerous externalities, both positive and negative, which are associated with agriculture,
are important considerations for policy makers. Sometimes cement agricultural
practices and markets produce too much of an undesired effort or not enough of
desired one. Governments may step in to correct such market failures with
policies designed to enter encourage or discourage a certain practice. However,
in divided policies may carry consequences for other polices and for other
countries. Such policies are therefore a major topic of discussion in the
international community.
Removing
Protectionist
Policies
on Agriculture is one step that may need to be taken for country to maximize
positive externalities, minimize negative one and make sure that the mixture of
outputs derived form agriculture corresponds to the needs of society. However,
removing agriculture supports is often cause or consternation among public
officials, who may predict the loss of a certain positive externalities of the
policies in already in place. At the same time, officials may fear the
implementation of new market protections in their countries which are trying to
promote the production of such outputs of agriculture.
In
such cases, advocates for free trade such OECD recommend that countries reduce
as much as possible. Their agricultural protections and institute policies
which specifically target the production the positive non-commodity outputs.
To
help countries formulate their agricultural policies, OECD has established a
framework for analyzing non-commodity outputs of agricultural activities when
analyzing the multifunctional of agriculture and the appropriate policies to
implement, there are several concepts that needs to considered. The first of
these is joint ness, or the extent to which the intended agricultural product.
And the incidental non-commodity outputs of agricultural activities, are
linked. The production of some non-commodity outputs may be inseparable form agricultural
commodity outputs may be inseparable from agricultural commodity outputs while
others may be produced independently of agricultural activity. The goal is to
separate agricultural commodity and non-commodity outputs as much as possible.
The next issue to be addressed is whether or not the production or
non-production of the non-commodity output in question constitutes a market
failure. If there is not market failure, there is no need for a policy to
correct it.
Finally
policy makers should examine the characteristics of the output in question
since it may have both a degree of market failure and joint ness associated
with it. After considering the matter form these three (3) perspectives, policy
makers may find non-governmental ways of addressing dealing with non-commodity
outputs or make changes in their agricultural policies.
WTO TRADE
DISCUSSIONS
In
Agricultural trade discussions in the WTO, the EU and Japan among others, argue
that multi-functionality justifies continued protection and subsidization of
agriculture. The United
States and the claim group argue that
support of multifunctional should be specific, targeted and provided in a
non-trade distorting manner.
REFERENCES
- www.wto.org/eglish/theritoe/glossary.e/multifunctionality-e.hlm
- “Multifunctionality”,
OECD Department for trade and Agriculture
OECD.org,20July2007.
By David Hecht
Special to the washing post
Sunday August 2, 2009 , 8: 59 pm
women husk Corn at village in Katsina state in Northern Nigeria have little access to modern input
such as fertilizers and irrigation (photos by David Hecht for the washing to
post )