 You're welcome back. We're so glad to know that you're still there and watching us and now we're going to talk something that's related to food. I'm a foodie and I like food and I like agriculture. So I'm so interested in this segment of the show today. Unfortunately, we'll be rushing a lot of things because we are pressed for time. We're being joined by someone who is really revolutionary when it comes to farming and he calls himself African farmer. I know he has another name, but it's African farmer that we know him by Mr. Mogadji. Welcome to the program sir. Thank you for having me. Well, there's fear that there's going to be a lot of hunger, especially from next year. Maybe flooding, maybe a lot of other factors that are responsible for that. Food security becomes an issue when we're discussing our livelihood and every other thing around it. So I have you navigated that field of farming and what do you do that gives you the impression that if it is followed the way you do it, we might have more food than we are crying now. So first and first is to say that Nigeria is not food insecure. Really? Nigeria is actually food secure. Is it secure or they can be food secure? No, Nigeria is food secure. It's the governments across all levels and the citizens that are not food secure. You have to explain that. So basically Nigeria has everything we need. Human resource first, the lands, the mineral resources, the natural resources and the technology. Everything Nigeria needs is available. However, it's the governments, especially local government and state, not the federal, especially and the private sector, the citizens that have not embraced the opportunities available. Now, so you find private sector and the citizens basically blaming governments and you find governments saying private sector, take the lead, we'll follow you. So everybody is waiting on each other. And so bottom line is that we're where we are, not because we're not producing enough. We're where we are because we're not managing enough. And that's the real truth. This year, tomatoes still got wasted in spite of the fact that we can say about 20, 30% of farmers have not been able to go to the farms in the north. Yet, tomato is still wasting this year. Yum is still wasting this year. Pineapple is about to come. It's going to be wasting. Plantain is coming out. It's going to be wasting. So bottom line is Nigeria as an entity is producing. It is we that we're not managing properly. And even right now, when we're talking about the floods, we're talking about the negatives. We're not preparing for the opportunities. You know, we're still talking about the floods instead of saying, okay, this flood is going to make the rains. The water is not going to recede by October, end of October. It's going to take till the end of November, which means that pepper vegetables that will be expensive normally June, July would be expensive April next year. What are we going to do? No strategy is coming out from any quarters from presidency, from the Ministry of Agriculture, from the humanitarian department. Nobody is talking about how to fix it. So what you will find out again is come March, February, March 2023. Tomatoes will be wasting again to 18 of 30, 40% of what will be produced from November. And this is almost a 25 years trajectory. And the Ministry of Agriculture have not been able to fix it. The presidency have not been able to fix it. Nobody is saying in 2023, tomatoes will no longer waste. Can I come in there? I find that very interesting. Now, these produce are going to waste. Because like you said, over a 25 year trajectory, we haven't been able to fix it. But for grains, for example, and in the north, we have silos built, if I'm correct, to properly store grains. Why haven't we been able to provide infrastructure to properly store the perishable items? Okay, so even the silos we have for grains, I stand to be corrected. Maybe something changed last week. Most of the silos are empty, most across the country. So even if we produce to store into the silos, we will be fairly food secure. So if it does not rain for three months in this country, Nigeria will go begging for food. During COVID, we had to take a loan. I think about 5000 metric tons from ECOA storage. We took a loan and our silos are empty and CBN is funding agriculture. So with the perishables, we have not paid attention because it requires quite a lot of infrastructure. They need regular power supply, which we should be looking at solar, wind, because most of it is in the north. But we're not focusing on that. Even the one that we have, the comparative advantage we're not leveraging. Even for the grains, when government was trying to concession those silos out, most of the associations, the poultry farmers association, all the big associations were sleeping. Why? Because they didn't see what they're doing as responsible for protecting their members. They focus on government, government, government. While if you go to Colorado, California, India, it is the associations that build silos to be able to take up the excesses and sell back to the farmers. So the associations are sleeping and have very cushioned pillows. Okay. I think this conversation, even though we said that it was going to end at 12, has to continue after the news. So let's just take a short break and take the news. And when we return, we continue with this conversation with the African farmer. It's getting more and more interesting. We can't just stop it here. So let's take this break now. We'll be back in a moment. Okay. Welcome back. We're still here with the African farmer and it was saying so many interesting things that we know if we begin to take them one after the other, we might not finish. But let me just begin or continue with this. Lagos is a state of aquatic splendor. That's what they always say. What advantages can we have from a state being an aquatic state? How much of agriculture can be done in the state? A lot. I think we underestimate the potentials in Lagos state. I don't know where we got the data from that Lagos doesn't have land. Well, when you compare it with other states, you can say Lagos doesn't have land. But when you compare it to the productivity of what it can do, then you know Lagos has lands. Lagos can feed Lagotians when it comes to vegetables. Lagos should be a major exporter of vegetables. Even vegetables across West Africa and to Europe. And also when it comes to the fish, you know, Lagos should lead. Well, the interesting thing in the last few years is the Commissioner of Agriculture in Lagos has actually upped the game in respect of vegetables and fish production. So you have more fish farming happening around the waterways and we're expecting an explosion. Something like a 300 times expansion. Because all the waterways, even on the third mainland bridge, you just see just pure water all the way. But you can do a lot of cage farming. You know, you can rare crabs. There's so much that can be done that's, you know, we're not doing enough. So why are we not doing? I would say private sector. There was a time when we did not have a government that is responsive to private sector or open to private sector. In the last four years now, we've, especially Lagos, we've had a government, especially the Ministry of Agriculture, open to agriculture with that open arms, but we're not having the private sector embrace it. It's always a slow, aggregate slow. But guess what now, irrespective of how slow it is, everybody is facing the challenge. So there's no big organization, the FMCGs now. If they have food cheaper for their staffs, life will be better. So everybody is grumbling now because the major players are not coming into it. You know, everybody's talking about dollar. They can access dollar to import their produce. Yes, they can rare fish hair, crab hair, sell in hair, you know, get more Naira or get exports to get dollar, but it's just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. So we keep blaming government. I have said enough of blaming government. Government has opened across the state. It's fairly southwest. Southwest has really opened up, but the private sector has not embraced it. We're still working with old syllabus. Now you said we're apparently just trying to rely on government alone and there's a need to bring the private sector. And I was just thinking of young people as well. Before you joined us, we were talking about the energy and the vibrancy of the young population, dynamism and all that. And I was just wondering how do we interest our young people in farming? And what are these things? Okay, now people, like Yamgu said at the top of the program, they feel it's a very dirty kind of occupation. They want to be white collared workers and things. But how can we get them to take farming seriously? And what components, what aspects of farming can young people really do? First and foremost, because I deal with a lot of youths. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. Almost all the business schools that offer agriculture, you know, I contribute. I volunteer there because they don't pay. Yeah, I volunteer to impact youths. And first and foremost, the youths say there's no money to start. As we sit here now, there is 22 billion Naira locked in the agricultural sector with two financial institutions for two years, 22 billion Naira. And if they don't take it, it's likely to end up in another West African country. So one, money is not the issue. And it's just one donor that made that funding available. Beyond that, we need role models. We need to show them people who have gone through the ropes. We need to tell more stories of people who have made mistakes in the process of trying to achieve success and show them what ought to have happened. One crucial thing is we allow our youths to recycle our mistakes in Nigeria. You don't have books. You don't have people sharing their pitfalls. So the youths go in, fall into the pitfalls, share the story, everybody runs away. But mentoring is very crucial. Incubation or internship, there is no high flyer as far as this country is concerned in the agriculture sector that has not gone through one form of internship or the other. You must serve someone. That's how the process is. And also, you must learn to focus. Take for instance, let me pick corn. I'm a fan of corn. I've been growing corn for 27 years in and out of the years. So corn, there are like four major types of corn in the country. There's the vitamin A corn, which is high in vitamin A nutrient. Good for the skin, good for the eye. You can specialize on that. There is a quality protein mix that is high in protein that when you feed your livestock at a certain stage, it allows the livestock to reach the market size two to three weeks before time. And also good for human consumption. There's the sweet corn. There's the regular corn. There's corn you use to do the conflicts. You know, there's so much, there's high zinc content of corn. The same corn people think they know. And all these cons require specialization for the FMCGs that import corn, all of them are looking inward. So you need to specialize. You can want to grow corn, want to do pig, want to do cassava, want to rear chicken. You must focus on narrow. That is something missing here. But many of us youths cannot go into farming. They can go into agribusiness. Many of them have the asset on their phones. They can become marketers. They can become brokers. They can make money leveraging on their phones. They can make money distributing. Farming is meant for a selected few. In every country you would develop country, you will find less than 10% of the population involved in agriculture. The remaining value chain is what many of them are into. So bottom line is we need to expose the youth to the value chain. Most importantly, because of the economy in Nigeria, we need to show them the money, bottom line. Show them the money and they will align. Okay. Well, there are so many issues we could deal with, but let's keep you hungry as it is. And hope that we'll have another opportunity to talk with African farmer, Mogadji. For now, let's put a stopgap here because we have yet another guest before we round up this show for today. We'd like to say thank you to you for coming on the program.