Zaria — Professor Mohammed Faguci Ishaku, the Director of the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, explains how Nigerian government, research institutes and farmers can arrest the impacts of global warming on the Nigerian agricultural sector, among other issues. Excerpt:
Can you tell us the impacts of global warming on our farmers?
I was trained as a plant breeder, a geneticist who specialised in developing new varieties of cowpeas with improved quality and ability to stand pest attack, drought and earliness. In recent time, I have moved into the area of modern biotechnology where genetic manipulation of crops is giving serious attention. This is a situation where crossbred would be done to enhance conventional genetic improvement tools. Now, on global warming, it has been scientifically shown that the world's climate is warming up, and the result of this warming are things like the Tsunami that we had in the Southeast Asia, the flood we are seeing right now in the United States of America and other places, these are the events. There is also the issue of drought. Very serious drought is being witnessed in many parts of the world. These are all the effects of global warming. When there is flood, farmers lose their crops, livestock, and even human lives.
Therefore, we have to be prepared for us to manage our lives under this unpalatable situation. Here, in IAR, our plan for combating this situation is to have early maturing crop varieties so that if there is a flood and the normal cropping has been lost to flood, a new set of crop would be planted. We have also developed drought-tolerant varieties. These varieties survive with a very small amount of water. There is also the expansion of the type of crops that we grow now. We need to look into the future for alternative crops. In case we find our places or farms inundated with water, you cannot grow crops such as sorghum that does not like water, but there are varieties of rice that can be grown. Therefore, we need these crops in our stores in case of emergencies so that government can distribute to farmers to ameliorate the situation. This unfortunate situation did arise recently in like Kogi State. You remember the flooding of River Niger, some years ago, and some other parts of this country. We are looking forward to using development of crop varieties that are adoptable to drought and can grow under high moisture as well. We need to look beyond what we are used to. We need to be situations like, what if our situation completely changes, what can we grow?
In your effort to come up with measures against global warming, have you started devising means of sensitising farmers?
We are in close collaboration with the agricultural development projects based in different states in the country. All our technologies, findings on how to improve agriculture, are taken to farmers, for them to see and adopt. In addition to that, we publish some pamphlets relaying the technologies available, which farmers can access. From time to time, we also invite the media to our events such as farmers' field day, where farmers and members of the public come and see what we are doing at the institute. Through those interactions, we have been receiving a lot of feedbacks from the public. Some of these feedbacks are coming on new varieties of crops, others coming for advice on how to manage certain situations.
Are you saying that IAR has in its stock variety of crops that are meant to suit the warming that the world is experiencing?
For, especially, maize, where we have already developed extra-early maturing variety, which would grow in those areas that we don't grow maize before. This is because the normal maize variety takes long time, into the rainy season. But we have developed the variety that can mature earlier. We have cowpea varieties that would grow almost everywhere in Nigeria, but we still continue researching because the changes can sometime be very drastic. We are trying to mimic what would happen and work along that line.
Is there any role that a farmer can play against the impact of global warming?
The only way that a farmer can assist himself is to contact the extension outfit closest to him for advice so that he would be advised on the appropriate crop variety he would plant, in case drought or flood is predicted in any given season. After doing that, he should consult with them regularly for guidance.
What are the roles of government in this direction?
The government's role, just like it is expected to do in every emergency situation, is to provide seeds. This is because when these things happen, the farmers become devastated. They might have lost the first crop they planted, so, they need some support.
How can agriculture be generally improved in Nigeria?
Agriculture is important in ensuring a stable social environment for national development. I think no investment would be too much on the part of the government to ensure that agriculture is accorded priority to move Nigerian citizens out of poverty. This can be achieved through the strengthening of researches that are primarily targeted towards solving specific problems affecting farmers. Government should also create the necessary environment for which there would be an appropriate pricing that would make farming a profitable venture for farmers so that they would earn a living out of it. I would also want to urge that even our foreign policy should be tailored to strengthen agriculture in our national economy. We can explore a lot of markets outside this country, despite the fact that Nigeria, on its own, is a big market. But we can use other markets, as well, to expand our income from agriculture.
(Daily Trust)
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