Why the Future of Farming is Not Farming | Usman Lawan | TEDxMaitama

Let's do this guys. I am quite interested in agriculture, so for those of you who are not interested in agriculture, I am interested in food seriously, not as the beginning of our problems, so today I will talk to you about Why the

future

of agriculture is not agriculture? Do you know that more than 80 million Nigerians earn their living through agriculture? A staggering figure, approximately 50% of the Nigerian population, but despite our huge involvement in agriculture, Nigeria spends around $6.8 billion a year importing food. Compare these figures. for example with the USA. Depending on the statistics, they take between 3 and 5 percent of the population dedicated to agriculture, but they earn billions by exporting agricultural products.

Obviously, there is no shortage of manpower or even the will to lead a decent life among our rural farmers, regardless of the agricultural system in Nigeria. is angry about several challenges, the main one being agricultural financing, so if these are the financial institutions they do not understand agricultural financing or they are risk averse and will not invest because of the risk involved or because they have better alternatives to make money and Because rural farmers cannot access finance, they remain my slides, so they will remain rural farmers forever. Secondly, because they cannot afford finance or cannot find access to finance, then they cannot afford improved machinery and seedlings to improve agriculture.

That brings us to the next problem: the lack of agricultural extension services in Nigeria. In reality, it is a good stretch to reach 10,000 rural farmers in Nigeria. The ideal ratio is one extension worker for every 200 farmers. So tell me how you handle that, unfortunately, even the one to ten thousand, we have people who are products of certificates rather than certificates, so we have an average engineer, for example, who spends five years in school and at the end of his course he goes to a technician on the road and asks him to fabricate his final projects. you have an agricultural extension worker or a cellular scientist who's never really been in the field or doesn't even know what a combine means or what it's like, and you end up with rural farmers like this, which is the fourth biggest problem for us in this country is that despite the number and level of production, depending on the crop and the numbers taken, we lose between 40 percent and up to 70 percent of what is produced in Nigeria due to post-harvest losses, roads They are in bad shape, the six is ​​almost zero and they can continue to name the problems, so today ask me what we need now a strong paradigm shift from the usual.

We may not realize this, but there is an imminent crisis that is about to hit the world and, by extension, it named Syria and everywhere else. So statistics say that by 2050 our population will reach 315 million, if we continue to produce food at the rate we produce today, we will die of hunger in the year 2050 because only those who can afford it will buy very expensive food. sometimes we end up with robberies and robofish the rest of us probably have to rob them to take their food there can never be national security without food security and this is the kind of thinking that makes me leave the bank, leave the oil sector and move into agriculture . something like a zero degree outsider in agriculture agribusiness I am a product of certificates.

I started with my small poultry farm, but my goal when I started was simple: we are going to produce organic, healthy, affordable eggs and chickens, and that's why we don't use antibiotics, we don't use multivitamins, so instead of multivitamins we use honeydew melon, carrot and cabbage, instead of antibiotics we use ginger and garlic, but when you do an initial karate that I'm doing, then you start to see everything. the other problems in the sector, all the statistics I was telling you about, you know, after his death I realized why now I can't provide food for my bed because the price of corn has gone from 8,000 to 36,000 and I said no.

We need to do something with regarding the value chain. I started as a farmer, so I need to move towards the

future

of agriculture, which is agribusiness. I started by gathering, you know, community influences and leaders. This was me speaking in the palace of the Emir of Kashi. where I was demonstrating the green seed to them and I planted it, I got it from Oklahoma State University and fortunately we are successfully manufacturing it now in Kaduna, in fact we are the first to do so. We were already talking to people in Kenya, Rwanda, to start exporting this because it costs about $150 to make one in the US we are making it for less than $40 in Nigeria now in Kashi I was able to convince the AMIA to give us a lease of 500 hectares the first thing he said to me the man looked at me and said what are you going to do with 500 hectares and I am like our families now that we have Daly and we have been able to engage 500 rural farmers in Kashi, one farmer per hectare, so we are training these people and also providing them with agricultural inputs like, you know, hybrid seeds, fertilizers and you know. fun extension services, we started it as a pilot and we hope to move forward across the board, but I'm also doing it, so specifically, I'm okay, we're going to grow just three things for the pilots, corn, soybeans and the reason for Granite is simple .

They are the main input of bird feeding, so 70% of bird feeding is those now. I solve that problem at least for me for now and for other small farmers around me, but then the problem keeps coming up, you see, when we talk about innovation, people think yes, drone

farming

. that's very beautiful, I love it, we're talking about combines, it's very beautiful, I love it, but it costs tons of money so I'm not even looking there yet, I'm thinking about doing simple things that will help improve productivity and means of life. of rural farmers increase productivity and better, to begin with, all of us, that is, we take soil samples to the laboratory.

I send this to uni aggregate Makati where we tested and did yield suitability analysis and we don't just plant the average rural farmer in Nigeria, he just plants his seed and you ask him and he says well that's how my father did it, that's how your father did it and his father before him, why are you even planting two seeds in the hole? I tell you, what is probably what is planting the cone is in its static generation after the fourth generation of the seed, please don't put it in the ground, eat it, another big problem. 60% of the cost of grain production goes to fertilizer, so what do we do?

I learned about organic fertilizers, so we have successfully created a zero waste

farming

cycle all grain produced by rural farmers goes to our feed mill the feed mill produces the feed for our fish and our chicken the chicken eats the fish defeat produces meat and eggs and then the product falls into what it is supposed to let us be farmers, no, let's not waste it, we take all that and collect all the pastures and culturalists around us, we use the chicken droppings to intersperse the pastures and convert them into organic fertilizer yesterday afternoon, my people were doing the numbers and Actually, they told me that Alice Meat was like, you know, we saved $9,000 on fertilizer because this shows me the numbers, whatever you know, this year we did thirty organic fertilizer tools, we need to go big all of us, but then remember I told you in All these efforts with the money that comes from us we need to do something big, so I'm the kind of person who belongs to the generation of complaints who refuses to complain, wants to be an adaptable leader and show results because that's the only way I can achieve it. people believe in me, understand me, and invest in me, so our next baby, in case you're wondering, was this farmer we dressed in a suit?

It's because I'm the boss of the farmers in suits, so our next baby, which ironically, I'm just introducing today. in the third event there is the farmer in a suit, it is an investment solution that provides professionals, even students, sometimes we have them bankers or bankers X or excellences who have resources and understand the problem of global food security and want invest and help fight this monster. but either they don't have the time or they don't have the knowledge to be farmers or maybe they just don't want to obtain that social level, we give them a guarantee on their money and a guarantee on a profit, give us that money we are going to give you.

We invest it in rural farmers while we provide them with training, we provide them with premium food mechanization. She lives and we also provide a market for her produce, so in the end we buy all the grains they produce and put them into feed. mill we make animal feed we give it to our animals poultry in our fish when they reach my cat's eyes what we do we process them, package them and send them to Abuja in Legos and our formal suits we buy so by extension we got ratings The first is that we are creating a platform that we can find through cheap investments for da matta from people interested in financing a system that helps rural farmers.

This system helps to improve the productivity of agricultural production and the productivity of rural areas. farmers, the system helps provide local jobs and that system helps solve the food security challenge of Nigeria, Africa and by extension the world. The second thing we are doing is institutionalizing Greek financing. Banks can do whatever they want. We need to move forward. Away from this certificate mentality because the education system is designed to produce civil servants who are bureaucratic and paper pushing. The education system is not designed to produce inventors and innovators and we need to start thinking: Did I say outside the box?

Who created the Box? why the box we just need to think like babies be free we need to solve problems not complain about problems not so much complain go treat Anna and Julia the last thing we are doing with the farmer and the suit is that we are democratizing prosperity through agriculture and agribusiness, ladies and gentlemen, I want to finally tell you that it is not the government, the politicians with whom we do not agree, it is not the government, it is not the president or the governors, it is not even the languages ​​or the twenty aluminos of our time .

Now the magnin jury agrees that it is the aggregate achievements of individuals enjoying a great nation one last call, ladies and gentlemen, wherever you are, whatever you do, what are you, banker, doctor, lawyer, engineer, in your own corners, please be an agent of change, be an adaptive leader, solve a problem, thank you? to listen