Nigeria’s livestock industry is work in progress

All around the world, livestock producers are aiming to contribute to meet the ever growing demand for animal protein. Mixed with this quest are themes like sustainability, animal health and profitability. All themes are interrelated with proper feeding and management. In the future, livestock production will be about innovation, efficiency and sustainability. Food security is about making safe, affordable and abundant food a reality. We need to achieve this at a time that is unprecedented.

Nigeria, a country with over 170 million inhabitants, has begun to embrace intensive livestock production especially grasscutter, snail, piggery, fish and poultry despite numerous obstacles. The livestock industry in Nigeria relies on imported supplies of fish meal, additives, medicines and vaccines. Lack of access to electricity in rural areas is a major constraint preventing producers from taking up intensive farming. The feed market in Nigeria is dominated by foreigners and imports from other countries, most local producers are small-scale.

Other areas of agriculture like rice, wheat, and sugar that could have been developed also suffered in the comatose years, the products of which have become massive import commodities and a conduit for revenue loss to the Nigerian economy. The feed industry is growing by around 40 per cent in 2020 with new players coming onto the scene steadily. It is estimated that the total demand for feed is in million tonnes monthly. Around 60 per cent is sold on open market and 40 per cent is produced and used internally by livestock farmers. Although Nigeria has corn, soya bean and cassava in abundance, the use of complete feed is becoming more common.

Entrepreneurs are positioning themselves to become suppliers of feed, breeding stock and ready-to-eat products. Furthermore, fish feed from Europe, the United States, Asia and Israel has captured a substantial market share in Nigeria due to more competitive pricing compared to most local production that doesn’t float.

The growth of Nigeria’s aquaculture industry has flat-line for the past decade. A complex and outdated system is viewed as the significant reason for this stagnation. Nigeria’s farmed fish sector needs access to the most up-to-date technology in feed and fish health products in order to improve the growth, feed utilisation and disease management in fish which is necessary to be competitive in the world market, and to meet the demands of Nigerians for farmed fish.

Intensive pig farming practices have the ability to help eliminate poverty in Nigeria. Pig feed can consist of maize, wheat, soya, PKC, vegetables, etc. The average farmer with free range pigs, who isn’t lucky enough to have a substantial pig enterprise, feeds the pigs with agro by-products and food residues. Pigs are valued because of their ability to convert these scraps into meat, enabling poorer farmers to spend less on high feed costs. Most producer co-operatives need to be started in order to produce, process and locally market pig products. Lack of training, no access to credit and lack of improved breeds, however, make this operation very difficult.

The business of rearing grasscutter is a booming venture in Nigeria. Ironically, largely because of ignorance, this line of livestock farming is yet to be fully tapped into. Many Nigerians prefer to go into the popular livestock farming like poultry, fishery and piggery. But rearing grasscutters bring more money.In the future production will expand to include some exotic animals such as gazelles, ostriches, crocodiles and antelopes may be grown for food. This may seem far-fetched, but remember that at one time cattle, camels, and sheep were wild animals before humans tamed them.

So, while we praised countries as worthy examples to emulate, we failed to mention, in detail, what these countries had to put in place to achieve the glory that we marvel at now. For me, this is not the right way forward. It is not sufficient to exemplify Malaysia’s oil palm success without mentioning the roles played by the government, private sector especially industrialists, the researchers, extensionists, the farmers and even the general populace of the country.

Things to really marvel at should include how the ordinary household adopted planting of oil palm even in their gardens, frontage of houses and how the processing of oil palm products became a business that encouraged production of the crop. This, in a way, protected farmers and guaranteed market for the product. The story is similar for all countries that have made some breakthrough with the agricultural sector.

By and large, poor logistics owing to underdeveloped road infrastructure, poor electricity and utilities, together with the unfavourable scale of production remain major hurdles for livestock production in Nigeria. Market volatility is also a major problem because surplus fish, poultry, or eggs from neighbouring countries can flood into the Nigerian market at any time and depress prices.

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