Olayinka Adegbite, University of Pretoria; Elizabeth Mkandawire, University of Pretoria, and Lepepeule Machethe, University of Pretoria

Women smallholder farmers in Nigeria are involved in all aspects of agriculture. This ranges from producing food on farms to putting it on plates. They’re involved in planting crops, livestock production, harvesting, marketing and processing of farm produce as well as food preparation and family care.

Yet, because they are women, they are held back by unequal access to resources – especially finances – that would help make them become more successful.

Agriculture contributes significantly to Nigeria’s economy. It is also the largest employment provider, with female smallholder farmers making up almost half the number of agricultural workers. They also play an important role in aspects of sustainable development. This includes being a bulwark against hunger and poverty in rural areas. Yet the majority still struggle to access affordable financial services to help them develop their farming operations and livelihoods.

Nigeria has made progress in strengthening regulations to enhance financial inclusion. But our study found that these regulations aren’t as effective as they could be to transform agriculture.

In the study, we looked at the gender gap in access to finance among smallholder farmers in Nigeria. And the impact of this on sustainable development.

Our research showed that these women farmers tended not to have bank accounts. This meant they lacked access to financial services like savings, credit and transactions.

This gender gap needs to be closed. We propose that this be done by introducing policies that favour women farmers. This could include targets for financial inclusion. It could also include implementing policies through collaboration with public organisations, the private sector and civil society.

Including women smallholders

Financial inclusion is meant to ensure all people have equal opportunity to access and use affordable financial services. These services include savings, credits, insurance, payments, transfers and remittances.

It’s been shown to have very positive effects on the lives of poor people. In addition, financial inclusion and achieving gender equality has been shown to have a positive influence on sustainable development.

Yet, the plight of women smallholders is often ignored by policy makers, financial institutions and those working in the agricultural sector.

Our study found that a significant financial inclusion gender gap exists in Nigeria’s smallholder agriculture. The largest gender gaps were in formal account ownership and savings. In other words fewer women farmers had accounts and saved with bank financial institutions, non-bank or mobile money service providers.

Also, fewer women smallholders owned mobile phones compared to men. As mobile banking is growing in Nigeria, not having a mobile phone means that women are excluded.

Other factors contributing to women’s financial exclusion include: poverty, low levels of literacy, limited education and limited assets. In addition, because of cultural and patrilineal traditions women typically don’t own land. They also have limited decision making powers when it comes to money.

Other restrictions include the fact that most women are constrained from participation in the marketing of high value crops. And then there’s institutional discrimination. An example is when financial institutions require a male signatory to grant a formal loan to a female farmer.

Need for financial inclusion

Nigeria tabled a revised national financial inclusion strategy in 2018. It identified the need to address gender gaps in financial inclusion. But no key performance indicator was set for women in smallholder agriculture.

Our study suggests this is a major omission. Failure to address the causes of women’s financial exclusion in Nigeria’s smallholder agriculture could result in a network of negative consequences. For example, the financial inability to adopt modern technologies – or access information – increases vulnerability on a number of fronts. This includes climate change, food insecurity and malnutrition, all while the population is increasing.

In turn, this degenerates into a vicious cycle of income inequality, poverty and poor socioeconomic development. This affects not only the women smallholder farmers, but their children, households, communities and the Nigerian economy.

Recommendations

No single approach can tackle the interrelated causes and effects.

But our study identified the need for Nigeria’s strategy to integrate gender specific goals for financial inclusion in smallholder agriculture. It is also important to establish partnerships between different stakeholders. These would include government, private and non-governmental organisations that have a common interest in women smallholders’ access to finance. Such partnerships should implement and finance clear-cut strategies in bridging financial inclusion gender gaps in smallholder agriculture in Nigeria.

Approaches should include developing agricultural finance innovations that reflect the realities of women. They need to be affordable, based on the financial needs of farmers. For example financial institutions should come up with and accept options – apart from land – that can be used as collateral for women smallholder farmers.

Similarly, successful models like the Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending should integrate and empower women smallholders in their agricultural value chain financing models.

Finally, it is important that Nigeria’s financial literacy agenda extend to smallholders and rural areas. And there should be systemic efforts at all level of society to ensure that women have direct access to finance and control.

Olayinka Adegbite, PhD candidate, University of Pretoria; Elizabeth Mkandawire, Postdoctoral Fellow and Coordinator: UN Academic Impact Hub for SDG2, University of Pretoria, and Lepepeule Machethe, Professor of Agricultural Economics, University of Pretoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Emmanuel O. Akindele, Obafemi Awolowo University

Nigeria’s population growth – at a rate of more than 2.5% a year – is indirectly driving all kinds of environmental degradation. There is an incessant demand for more space for people to live in and use. One of the consequences is the destruction of forests. Forests that are close to water, known as riparian forests, tend to be most vulnerable.

Access to a watercourse has often informed the choice of human settlement or activity. Needing a year-long supply of water for their crops, farmers often convert riparian forests to agricultural lands. In many cases, especially in the dry season, such farmlands encroach almost into the waterways.

Other kinds of business also need a source of water. In Nigeria, car-wash centres are often sited along rivers and streams where forests once existed. Block-making operations, too, are often situated close to waterways.

The rapid decline in freshwater biodiversity has been attributed to deforestation of riparian corridors and human activities where there were once forests.

This is because riparian forests are the link between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

Riparian forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services and confer a great advantage on their adjacent surface freshwater. They reduce climate change impacts by absorbing carbon dioxide, regulating the micro-climate and providing cover for aquatic ecosystems. They also stabilise river banks, control erosion and siltation of inland waters, and provide food for aquatic animals.

My research group recently investigated a Nigerian stream, Opa Stream, Ile-Ife, whose riparian corridor had been deforested. We found a worrying level of heavy metal pollution in the water. This is probably the result of human activities and related to the loss of forest.

Effects of deforestation

The deforestation of riparian corridor comes with two major impacts. First is the loss of ecosystem services, which leads to the poor health of adjacent freshwater ecosystems. Second is the negative impact on freshwater systems of human activities that take place on land converted from forest. Vegetation would mitigate heavy metal pollution because its presence means no agricultural or industrial activity on the riparian corridor. It also reduces the amount of run-off into freshwater systems, thus reducing the amount of human-generated pollutants.

A most noticeable impact is the release of persistent bio-accumulative toxicants to adjacent waters. These toxicants include heavy metals and organo-metal compounds, which accumulate in animal tissues at higher concentrations along the food chain.

My research group found five heavy metals – lead, cadmium, iron, arsenic and copper – exceeding their freshwater recommended limits in the stream we studied. We also found a strong linkage for concentrations of lead, copper and arsenic between the water column and the stream bed. This suggests that the entire freshwater system was contaminated with the metals and all the resident organisms were predisposed to contamination on account of the metals.

In this case, the heavy metal concentration is due to car-wash activities and block-making industries on the riparian corridor.

The use of pesticides on subsistence and commercial farms too contributed. Cadmium concentration was particularly high in water and sediment samples. High concentration of cadmium is another consequence of agricultural practice on the riparian corridor and it has varied level of toxicity among aquatic animals.

We do not have baseline data on this, but concentrations of these metals could have been heightened by prevalent activities on the riparian corridor.

We reported that a good number of the animals in the stream could be under stress because of the heavy metal pollution. These include the micro-organisms, plankton, insects and fishes, all of which can become less physiologically fit because of heavy metal pollution. Plankton for instance can take up heavy metals in the water column, transfer such to bigger animals in the food chain where they become magnified in concentrations.

Restoring degraded tropical freshwater systems

It’s important to conserve pristine or near-pristine tropical freshwater systems and restore the degraded ones. A good way to start would be by conserving or restoring the health of riparian forests, since this often determines the health of their adjacent water-bodies.

Riparian forests are an inseparable part of freshwater ecosystems, and should be protected by relevant government authorities at local, state and national levels.

People often think about what they can get from nature. They think of food, water, shelter and economic gain – but they don’t always think of the many ecosystem services they get that are less obvious. Human existence hinges on the visible and hidden ecosystem services of nature, including riparian forest and freshwater ecosystems.

This is why individuals, local communities and governments should do more to check the rate of human encroachment on riparian corridors. More effort is also needed to reclaim and reforest these areas.

Emmanuel O. Akindele, Senior Lecturer, Obafemi Awolowo University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bolanle Akinwande, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso

Nigeria accounts for 60% of the world’s [yam output] and 74% of the total production in West Africa. Grown as a staple food, the tuber of the yam plant is its economically important part. The yam tuber, as in other tuber crops, is essentially a starchy or carbohydrate food and its principal nutritional function is the supply of calories.

The challenge, however, is that the onset of maturity in yam is not well understood and the date of harvest often bears no relationship to the functions and activities of the tuber. As a result farmers aren’t able to accurately determine the best time to harvest the crop.

In the course of my research, I have found a scientific process that would enable yam farmers to determine the earliest possible time at which harvesting could be done. I found that the most advantageous time to harvest is when the starch content of the leaf is at minimum levels. It’s as this point that the lower leaves start to turn yellow. I established that this happened before the whole leaves started to decompose, some six months after planting had been done in the rainy season.

Harvesting yams at this point would have two major benefits. It would help improve the food and storage quality of the yam. It would also ensure that the farmer could use the same plot of land for planting another crop, especially vegetables, before the end of the rainy season to generate more income. This would benefit subsistence farmers enormously.

The process

My research involved planting whole seed tubers of various sizes (100 g – 300 g) from five local varieties and 15 genotypes of white yam at the beginning of the rainy season. I conducted my research in 2003 and 2004 but the findings remain relevant.

Harvesting was done at monthly intervals four months after planting was done and when the vines began to emerge. Harvesting continued until the point at which the foliage started to decompose.

Within this period the dry matter, sugar and starch contents of both the leaves and yam tubers were measured. The aim was to derive an indication of the best time to harvest the tuber.

Dry matter: In the leaves dry matter content increased steadily from four months till six months after planting when the lower leaves started to turn yellow. In the tuber dry matter content increased steadily as they aged until all the leaves decomposed. I deduced from this that harvesting was best done when the spike in dry matter content of leaves was noticed – that is when they started to turn yellow.

Sugar content: In the leaves sugar content went up and down as the plants grew, but dropped drastically by the time all the leaves had decomposed. In the tuber, the sugar content reduced as the tuber grew, but then increased sharply by the time the leaves decomposed. My conclusion from this was that it is better to harvest the tubers when there is a sharp decrease in sugar content of leaves – and increase in the sugar content of the tuber.

Starch content: The accumulation of starch in the tuber reached its peak when accumulation of starch in the leaves started which made them turn yellow.

Since yam tuber is essentially a starchy food and its principal nutritional function is the supply of calories, it is most appropriate to harvest it at this time, especially with no appreciable increase in tuber yield any longer.

I concluded from my research that the starch content of leaves was the determining factor for when the tuber had reached maturity. The yam tuber was fully matured when minimum starch content was obtained in the leaves. These low levels of starch content were marked by the yellowing of the lower leaves of the plant. This provided a clear indication of the earliest possible time to harvest the yam.

The problem

Before our findings, farmers used subjective ways of determining when to harvest their yams. This often adversely affected the quality and yield of their farms. The most common measures farmers used were observing their yams, as well as calculating when to harvest based on the date of planting.

These rather crude indices had been developed over the years. They were based on observations of the ageing process of parts of the yam, percentage of the tuber length that was whitish at harvest or those that had a bitter taste after cooking.

Using these methods meant that more emphasis was placed on an individual element, such as the taste after cooking. But this amounted to what I call a “maturity of convenience”, rather than “harvest maturity.” And it’s generally a compromise between social requirements and those of the plant’s biology.

The result is that yam tubers are harvested either too early, or too late.

By using the simple technique of harvesting when the lower leaves begin to turn to yellow, farmers can harvest before the entire leaves decompose and be sure of matured yams being harvested. It will also mean that farmers will be able to use the fields to plant for income-earning crops such as vegetables before the end of the farming season. This could translate into improved livelihoods for farmers.

Bolanle Akinwande, Professor of Food Science, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The African Development Bank (AfDB), yesterday, said it has earmarked $500 million loan for the development of four agro-industrial zones across various states of the Federation. AfDB which made the revelation when it paid a courtesy visit on Clifford Ordia-led Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debt, said other development partners have also pledged their support.

President of the bank, Akinwumi Adesina, who was represented by his senior special adviser on Industrialisation, Professor Oyebanji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, said discussions with the Federal Government started since April, 2019.

Called Special Agro Industrial Process, he said it will be similar to the free trade zone, where thousands of direct and indirect jobs will be created for Nigerians across the country. He said: “We have been engaged with the Federal Government since April last year. One of the standout issues in the discussion is the issue of agriculture. There something called Special Agro Industrial Process. It’s similar to the free trade zone. We are in 15 different countries.

“The idea of the zone is for dedicated agribusiness. Africa is lagging behind. Farmers work hard, but they get very little. When the President of the bank was the Minister of Agriculture, he started about 14 of these zones. A lot was spent. Since he left as Minister, nothing has happened since then. “The bank has advanced $500 million to beef up these zones in the next few years. The private sector and others are pledging support. These funds will be used to provide roads and other infrastructure.

“We are tired of people laughing at us in Nigeria. This project is working in other countries. It can also work here. The AfDB is there to support Nigeria.

“Our goal is that, in the next two years, we will begin to see results. Every state will be affected. Nigeria shouldn’t be importing food. We should be at the forefront of exporting food to other parts of the world.

Speaking on behalf of other senators, chairman of the Committee, Ordia, pledged the support of the upper legislative chamber.

He urged the continental bank to carry every stakeholder along, while decrying the late briefing of lawmakers.