CBNet COMMUNITY BUSINESS NET FOR

AGRICULTURE CONCEPT

AS

THE VEHICLE FOR IMPLEMENTING THE

AGRICULTURE TRANSFORMATION AGENDA

COMPREHENSIVELY AND SUSTAINABLY

ABUJA THE HEART OF NIGERIA

For more Enquiries

YABA RURAL COOPERATIVE FOUNDATION

CF

Tel: 08050424812, 07057258117, 07061954465, 07014050766

E-mail: yabaruralcooperativefoundation@yahoo.comyabagari@gmail.com

ParkIndustrial

Flour &Cereal

Cassava into:Garri GritsFufuChipsElubo

YABA, Abaji Area Council, Abuja, FCT

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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the community Business Net (CBNet ) for Agriculture concept and to propose and advocate the adoption of the concept as the vehicle for promoting and sustaining Agriculture business in Nigeria.

1.1. The status of agriculture as a key component of the Nigerian economy is not in doubt. With a 40% contribution to the GDP and providing employment for about 70% of the active population, agriculture require to be truly entrenched as the bedrock for viable business entities for communities all over Nigeria.

1.2. There is the urgent need to engender the sustainable Agricultural development that will ensure not only National and household food security and improve rural livelihoods but as huge hubs for massive employment generation through the establishment of functional clusters of agro- industries in every community that will produce high quality products to compete and meet global demands.

1.3. The new focus of the transformation agenda of this administration on promoting agriculture as a business, requires that we adopt innovative approaches to getting this done as fast as possible leveraging on a structure that already exist nationwide.

1.4. There is the need to be proactive to build platforms to prepare our farmers to easily buy into the global ICT advantage for driving markets, and financial inter-mediations through deliberate development of a national Agro business networks with the small holders' farmers as the vehicle, the drivers and the beneficiaries.

1.5. The proposal is suggesting that the states' Agricultural development projects (ADPs) structure can be leverage on to deliver and oparationlise the CBNet concepts as a quick win option for achieving the agriculture transformation agenda objectives.

2.0.

2.1. It is important to note that poverty particularly rural poverty in Nigeria is a reflection of our agrarian structure that is not properly institutionalised. The bulk of the farmers in Nigeria are rural smallholder including women who remain trapped in a cycle of poverty due to the poor financial performance of their small farms business related to.

1.0. INTRODUCTION

THE STRUCTURE AND CHARACTER OF NIGERIAN AGRICULTURE.

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2.1.1 - Their farms not reaching their full productivity potential.2.1.2 - growing wrong mix of crops to fully exploit opportunities in the commodity

markets.2.1.3- Inability to access and purchase the needed farm input required to maximize

the quantity and quality of yields.2.1.4- Lack of knowledge of simple techniques for effectively boosting the

productivity of the farms.2.1.5- Financial and market constraints inhibiting sector growth.2.1.6- poor supply management system for intermediating the flow of information

and financial transactions among partners engaged in production, financing and marketing of products.

2.2. Banks and Microfinance institutions have experimented with finance and farm input loans and have experienced poor repayment rates and high transaction costs.

2.3. Exporters and Agro-allied industrialists have ventured into small holder group extension activity and out growers credit schemes with mixed results to ensure reliable supplies of produce for their core business of export marketing and raw material supplies.

2.4. Series of multilateral / donor supported intervention programmes have been carried out with results that have remain largely unsustainable at the expiration of the programme / fund periods.

2.5. Attempts have been made to promote and support small holder self – help groups and cooperatives (for information sharing and produce aggregation) and these have proven to be untenable vehicle for basic financial services such as credit provision, payment distributor or savings mobilization as these are usually hijacked by elites whose primary interests do not include investment in farming as a business.

3. concept is intended to address the establishment of functional farmers business institutions and Agrarian Structures that will encourage the growth of real Agric business in communities with participants that are well established in their home base environments.

3.1. Be well structured community base vehicles required to drive and sustain all the programmes / initiatives in the transformation agenda.

3.2 serve as incubators and platforms to accelerate and systematize the process of creating successful enterprises by coordinating and providing them with comprehensive and integrated range of support including incubator space business support services and clustering and networking opportunities. It wills generate steady flow of new businesses with above average jobs and wealth creating potentials.

3.3 The main goal of the CBNet as an incubator is to develop and empower community based agribusiness units all over Nigeria. These rural agribusiness

The community business Net (CBNet)

This CBNet for Agriculture will therefore:

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will not only be financially viable and free standing but will create new jobs revitalize neighbourhoods, put into use and commercialize new technologies and strengthen local and national economy within a very short time frame. The emerging platforms are capable of sustaining the new gains taking advantage of the huge potentials that abound in the agricultural sector.

4.

The ADPs system is well established in all the 36 states and FCT. The existing structures which include zones, blocks and cells offices fit in well in this concept for the purpose implementing and consolidating as fast as possible. The ADPs are made up of highly qualified staff to effectively drive the CBNet concept with minimal cost and capacity support. To operationalise the CBNet concept the block offices will serve as CBNet centre with the village extension agents functioning as CBNet facilitator/ agents/ clusters coordinators.Each CBNet centre and staff will be equipped to effectively mobilize, organize and provide training business advices, expert and technology support linkage to sources of fiancé and market and develop business and farm clusters with the farming communities.

Ø Each CBNet centre will provide a ready platform for banks/financial institutions input dealers /manufacturers, industries/ processors commodity dealers/ marketers and exporters as well as government agencies to market their products, services and support activities for access by the target farming communities. Therefore the CBNet will serve as a complete interface platforms and meeting place for demand and supply activities.

See the CBNet concept diagram (structure & summery) on the centre spread of this document

6. The adoption of the CBNet concept as the vehicle for agriculturaltransformation in Nigeria will enable the transformation agenda.

Ø Effectively focus rural agribusiness incubator mentoring and services mix.Ø Take full cognizance of existing business environment and the agrarian

structure in Nigeria and consistently initiate and deliver solution packages to grow agribusinesses.

Ø Consider the feasible/affordable funding strategies and long term sustainability options in practice.

Ø Develop and entrench easily adaptable ownership and management structures.

Ø Institutionalize measurable monitoring and appraisal indicators that will promote visibility of efforts.

Ø Particularly for NIRSAL this will institutionalize a very reliable credit delivery platform that will guarantee easy and early repayment for beneficiaries because their investments are visible, accessible and measurable. All the

The States' Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) as vendor organization for CBNet

Outcomes

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professed goals of NIRSAL will be realized using this grass root based verifiable vehicle.

Ø The CBNet centers will have full data and information of all farming activities and farmers in the block. This will allow for every planning parameter to be practically operated / applied.

7.0. 1. That for all the packages of the agricultural transformation agenda to be easily

operationalised in Nigeria a functional vehicle like CBNet is required.2. That because there is an existing states ADPs structure it will be most cost

effective to leverage on the ADPs to delivers and operationalise this vehicle.3. That the CBNet option will create the needed platform to effectively engage

all stakeholders and key players - large scale buyers, processors, research institutions input supplier, transporters, bankers and farmers - to establish the needed linkage and network for mutually beneficial relationship to drive agriculture business in Nigeria within a very short time.

4. That using the CBNet platform to create a supply management system for intermediating the generation and flow of information and financial transaction among partners engaged in production, financing and marketing of agricultural produce will open and grow the agricultural sector to absorb our huge idle labour hands in Nigeria into a growing profitable business.

5. That this CBNet concept can easily be implemented with relatively very small financial outlay given robust but underutilised States ADPs' structures.

8.0. It is suggested and advocated that all stakeholders;

1. Consider and support the adoption of CBNet concept as the vehicle to implement all agricultural transformation agenda packages in Nigeria to enable communities to key in fast and develop existing agricultural potentials.

2. Initiate actions for the commencement of necessary processes to facilitate the Nationwide adoption of this concept as a way of creating jobs and wealth and initiate agribusiness to gainfully engage the youths immediately.

3. Mobilise funds to leverage on the States' ADPs structures to institutionalise CBNets across communities all over Nigeria as a way of generating production activities to build and sustain viable commodities value chains for small holders and family farmers in Nigeria.

Note

In conclusion

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IMPLEMENTATION OF COMMUNITY BUSINESS NET (CBNet) FOR AGRICULTURE CONCEPT IN THE FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) occupies an area of about 8,000 Sq.Km(800,000 hectares). Out of this, 274,000 hectares are available for agricultural activities, 270,000 hectares is supposed to be under Forest reserve (most of these have been deforested) and 250,000 hectares earmarked for development of cities, the remaining 6,000 hectares accounts for rocks, hills and rivers. The indices of the aforementioned statistics are that about 70% of the land mass of FCT is reserved for agrarian development.

It is estimated that less than 150,000 hectares of the available farmlands are under cultivation. Most of these are in smallholdings scattered all over the Territory without any planned pattern of development. The balance of about 180,000 hectares is lying fallow and poorly utilized. Recent surveys indicate that there are over 160,000 farming families in the FCT. There are over 90,000 farmers captured in the Growth enhancement scheme (GES) to date.

Abuja is therefore essentially an agricultural area and often regarded as one of the country's food baskets. Its centrality in addition to the lush vegetation, good weather, and excellent soil encourages large scale farming of both cash and food crops like yams, beans, rice, groundnuts, maize sorghum, millet, sesame soybeans, as well as orchards and plantation crops. Equally, the area has high potentials for irrigation, livestock and fisheries production.

The issue of organized agricultural production at the community level is a first step towards effective involvement of the small farming families in organized agro-business development in FCT. As part of this process there is the need to consider the incorporation of Community Supported Agricultural projects in the Agricultural Land development programme being implemented since 2005.

The FCT ADP was established in 1990 with just two zones. Today the ADP has six zones well structures to effectively cover the territory with over 120 village extension cells, most with well-trained extension agents. The CBNet concept implementation in the FCT is through the ADP.

i. Conduct of internal processes for staff and management of the Agriculture and Rural Development Secretariat (ARDS) and ADP to domesticate and cultivate ownership of the concept – (November /

Activities and timeline:

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December 2013)ii. Conduct of series of sensitization meetings and trainings for the field staff

and linkage to other stakeholders – (January 2014)iii. Conduct of participatory community planning and community structures

development for extension Cells and Blocks – (January / February 2014)iv. Community production / product inventory and participatory appraisals

to establish agreed areas of comparative advantages and community preferences – (February 2014)

v. Documentation and reports compilation, production and distribution for stactivities iii & iv above – (1 week of March 2014)

vi. Convening of all stakeholders workshop to draw up final implementation rdstrategy / programme for FCT in 2014 as a take-off year – (3 week of

March 2014)

Special Brand YABA RICE

Yaba Rice

Y BA A RICE

High Quality Grain

Yaba Rural Cooperative FoundationCFYABA, Abaji Area Council, Abuja, FCT

07057258117, 07061954465, 07014050766Tel: 08050424812,

Produced by

E-mail: yabaruralcooperativefoundation@yahoo.comyabagari@gmail.com

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@rtmaster 2013