We need people in agricultural services — Ibok

Ogo Ibok

The Chief Executive Officer, Sense Agric, Mrs. Ogo Ibok, discusses the business opportunities in the agricultural value chain in this interview with IFE ADEDAPO

What prompted you to start Sense Agric?

We are into consulting and we started Sense Agric based on the experience we had prior to getting into the industry because there was no information to direct us into the area of agriculture we wanted to go into. It was really difficult. It took me two years to get information I needed. That was in 2012. We had organised an agricultural fair and a lot of people turned up. After that, people came to meet me asking for where to source for materials and information on agricultural produce. That was how we started. Since then, we have been disseminating information to people.

We built two online portals, agriculturalnigeria.com where people can get information on basic agricultural groups, food processing and other research information. We recently started a new one which is called the

marketplace. It is a platform where buyers and sellers meet. The farmers can sell their produce before they harvest. Through the marketplace, a cluster of people can be brought together to supply to factories and then get information across to people on issues like the quality buyers need, the varieties demanded so that the farmers will produce what the market wants. The marketplace is used to achieve a lot of things.

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You mentioned that the platform provides information on planting and harvesting, what of the practical aspect, are you looking into that?

First, we are providing the basic information because a lot of our clients are either working in the bank or working in oil companies and are looking at agriculture as something they can retire into. Some want to go into it as an alternative job outside the formal sector. For most of them, they have no idea of where to start.

The first step is to get basic information. There are also training programmes which are like backups for the online information. Now that they have an idea of the economic importance of tomatoes and the value in its cultivation, the next step should be to learn about crop production and other basic things they must know. Then they can learn the practical aspect after.

Because agriculture is wide, we work in partnership with others. We have farmers coming for the clinic to share ideas with others and for further learning, interested parties go to them to seek assistance when they have problems. That is how we are structuring this training. It starts from the theory and we move to the practical.

Tomato is one of the basic ingredients of food in Nigeria. Are we producing enough to feed our people?

Nigeria is the second largest producer of tomato in Africa. So we produce a lot of tomatoes but the problem is that 60 per cent of what we produce go to waste.

We are producing large quantities but it can never be enough because we consume them but still demand more. The point is if we can harness the ones we are producing, it will go a long way. The fact is that we produce and waste them. Really, if a proper analysis is done, we may find out that we actually produce a lot of tomatoes just that we lose a lot of it due to lack of storage and preservation methods and poor handling.

What do you propose for the proper handling of tomatoes?

Every solution has issues that will make it difficult. For example, we get a lot of tomatoes from the north and during transport, there are about 35 checkpoints and at every checkpoint, you pay money. The money being paid will eventually be transferred to the final consumers, that is one problem. Transporting tomatoes from Kano for instance to Lagos is a long distance. The bad roads and frequent breakdown of the conveying vehicle contributes to the spoilage of 80 per cent of the tomatoes.

We need proper vehicles for transporting produce. The logistics has to be right. Refrigerator trucks with the tomatoes packed properly in crates will reduce spoilage. Instead of packing them in raffia baskets that squashes them and make them rot faster, they can be packed properly in crates and arranged in refrigerated trucks.

If we are going to achieve that, we need people who will specialise in agricultural logistics. They will move these produce from the farm to market. We don’t have people in that area. All we have now are people transporting in lorries. That is a huge gap and that is one of the opportunities we are trying to highlight. When we talk about agriculture, what most people think about is farming. There are services that also need to be provided. People need to understand those services so that if you want to be in agriculture, you can decide to go into the service side of it.

Presently, the category of farmers we have are of the aging population, how can we encourage the younger ones to go into farming?

There two categories of the young population, there are the ones who really want to go into agriculture and others who see agriculture as occupation for the poor people. For the young people who want to go into agriculture, funding is a major challenge. Young people don’t have access to the kind of funds required because it is a capital-intensive business. Although you can start small, but land and other inputs will still be needed. The point is that if we want younger people to be interested, we must devise funding systems that are tailored for them. It cannot be the same funding support given to the elderly that will be provided for them because we are excluding them completely.

In terms of young people who see it as a poverty-driven business, the more we have the educated people in, then they will begin to see that it is not for the poor. I know a lot of farmers who relocated from the United Kingdom to Nigeria. We need to begin to showcase these people who are educated so that people will see that it is not for the poor. We need to change their perception.

Is the use of venture capital to support farmers a workable one?

It depends on whether it is equity or it is a loan. The good thing about venture capital is that they can bring in a lot technical competence that you will need to run the farm properly. Part of the reasons farms don’t do well here is that people don’t see it as a business. It is a business and if it must do well, there must be proper structure which is another reason banks deny farmers credit facilities, because a lot of them don’t have records. Venture capitalists will bring in some of the competence you need to run the company because no venture capitalist will give you money if you are not properly structured that is one good thing about it. Yes, it can work.