The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has said that the production value of three of the six primary commodities that it focused on namely: Yam, Cassava and Maize in the country is worth about $23 billion annually.
The Director, Research for Development Directorate, Western Africa, Mr. Robert Asiedu who disclosed this at a media event in Lagos recently gave the names of other food crops that the institute focused on to include Banana, Plantain, Cowpea and Soybeans.
Asiedu who quoted the social scientists of the institute as having said and established that for every dollar invested in Maize generated over $81 worth of additional food for the poor in Nigeria also said that the value for Cassava would be $59 worth of additional food.
“So, this has been done to establish the importance of these crops and they have also gone ahead to study the impact of the work that we have been doing and if we take the example of the classical biological control of Cassava, studies across 27 countries in Africa showed that the benefit of 9 to 14 billion dollars that is saved.
“But the President of FAO put it very well, he actually mentioned that for every dollar invested in that project, one human life was saved because this was such a threat to livelihoods. We have done impact assessment for other components of our work but the work continues”, he said.
He noted that one would observe that Maize production had moved far north now even as he recalled that it used to be more in the Middle Belt and down south adding that this development was made possible as a result of the prevalence of shorter duration varieties, the extra early yield and then the drought tolerance built into the varieties as well as the strigar tolerance.
“We are able to grow the Maize much farther into the north, into the zones that were previously known for Sorghum and Millet. So, in terms of area of production, there has been significant improvement”, he added.
The Director pointed out that another development in Maize production was the active collaboration between the Maize breeders and the seed companies so that there was a flow of the breeders’ seeds through on to the seed companies for them to generate the foundation seed and then the certified seed.
According to him,” Just one statistics for instance, by say 1970, West and Central Africa, the areas under improved varieties or modern varieties was about 5%, by about 2005, we have reached about 60% for the areas covered by modern varieties. So, there is a significant improvement”.
When asked to quantify the gains made in this regard in monetary value, he had this to say,” I cannot give you directly now the monetary value for Maize, I have to check but I mentioned for instance, if you check the value of production of Maize, it is about $6 billion per year in Nigeria alone.
“Now, if you think of the impact of the pests and diseases, that we have sort of addressed, you will take the pest or disease like the Maize streak, now you don’t see the Maize streak much but Maize streak could have really, if we hasn’t addressed the breeding effort, that would have cut the Maize production by more than half of what we have and you must have heard of the fall army worm, if you are not able to control that, you can see that this $6 billion per year that I mentioned is threatened. So, these are sort of the order”.
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