Should Smallholder Farmers Embrace Contiguous Farming?
Chidindu Mmadu-Okoli, Joshua Agama, Gabriel Eze
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
Tamarabrakemi, a middle aged cassava farmer from Yenagoa (Nigeria), solely manages her farming activities. With the increasing demand for garri and other food varieties from processed cassava, and the unpredictable cost of sales of farm inputs, she is yet to consider the possibility of joining forces with farm owners sharing boundaries with her. “I don’t want to work with anybody because, before you know it, problem don come [problems will emerge]”. She expressed her disinterest giving reasons on the ease and spontaneity of taking decisions alone, relying less on other farmers, breach of trust in group farming agreements, as well as other religious, communal and/or moral differences that could cause conflicts of interest.
With over 34 million hectares of arable land available for farming in Nigeria, about 88% of Nigeria’s farmers (roughly 38 million) are smallholders, defined by FAO (2020) as farmers with less than 10 hectares of land. Sixty-three percent of these smallholder farmers only have access to 2 hectares or less of these lands for crop production and live below the poverty line of 1.9 USD a day. In Nigeria, land ownership is still a major determining factor for food production as most farmers can only cultivate on inherited lands, and few who can afford, on leased plots. Meeting Nigeria’s food security demands require the joint efforts of stakeholders from ground up on sustainable, technology-driven food production by 2050. To successfully achieve this, Nigerian farmers do not have to work in silos, but can leverage the strength of coming together through contiguous farming.
For Abdullahi, a smallholder farmer in Gumel, Jigawa State, farming in groups is a beneficial venture which he is always open to explore. He says it makes farm operations easier and cost effective. “I like that farmers with common goals can cultivate collectively. It makes it easy to access finance and quality inputs at affordable prices.”
Contiguous farming is a crop production method that involves the cultivation of farmlands that are next to each other in sequence. Although it is often mistaken for cluster farming, this method helps smallholder farmers leverage friendships, family relationships, business networks and other relationships to create real profits by merging farms that share common boundaries into a mother farm. These farmers come together as a group for the purpose of accessing farm inputs, credit facilities and advisory services in wholesale quantities in order to increase productivity, without losing the individual ownership of their farms.
With small-sized farmlands being commonplace, farmers face the challenge of getting sufficient agricultural products (seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, equipment, and technology) and services suited to their needs. When available, affordability is a challenge, as most suppliers are unable to provide retail services at a cost that is cheap for the farmers. With sole farming, financial stringency makes it difficult for farmers to use improved practices, machineries, and modern inputs for their farming. Moreso, these inputs may be underutilized or misused in the quest to “save”, which could result in low yields or low marketable surplus. Farmers also have difficulties accessing sufficient credit facilities with small-sized farmlands.
Access to finance is one primary reason contiguous farming trumps sole-farming, as the gap between agriculture and finance is wide. Since over 70% of households in Nigeria practice farming on small arable lands, the merits of contiguous farming goes beyond farmers and their immediate families, to meeting the current and future food and feeding demands of Nigerians, for profits and for keeping the planet safe. Farmers working together on the mother farm have higher negotiation power and can jointly enjoy buying and using implements, bargains, selling to the same buyer, as well as logistics operations. To improve access to finance for farmers, most agricultural lending institutions look out for the level of risk sharing opportunities amongst recipient farmers when providing financial solutions. One of such financial institutions is the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), owned entirely by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and tasked with the mandate to stimulate the flow of affordable finance and investments into the agricultural sector by de-risking the agriculture & agribusiness finance value chain, fixing agricultural value chains, building long-term capacity, and institutionalizing incentives for agricultural lending.
For smallholder farmers, farmers groups/cooperatives and large scale primary producers, NIRSAL offers its core service called the Credit Risk Guarantee (CRG) which covers ₦5 million to ₦2 billion credit in the form of loans and debt instruments, through which the farm budget is implemented. In other words, NIRSAL provides mechanisation, fertilizer, extension service, and other inputs through vendors as part of the farmer’s economics of production. These are all inaccessible as a single farmer. Additionally, NIRSAL’s recently-launched Agro Geo-Cooperative is a different model specially aimed at supporting contiguous smallholder farmers to access sustainable finance and quality inputs. As such, contiguous farmers who come together to form Agro Geo-Cooperatives of at least 10 hectares of farmland can benefit from this scheme.
Although, some smallholder farmers still have their doubts with the benefits of farming along common boundaries: communal and family conflicts playing a great role in the decision to leverage relationships for food production, contiguous farming increases food sufficiency and reduces poverty levels efficiently. With the strength from the coming together of farming groups, farmers can produce more crops of the same or various varieties, increase yield and consequently, boost the nation’s food security. Along with the option for higher and better pricing for produce, the personal income of the members of the group, earned from increased yield, relieves more farmers from economic and social misery, so that they can improve their living conditions.
Additionally, cost effectiveness and risk-sharing present the strong needs for smallholder farmers to embrace this farming method. Farmers in a contiguous group can share the risks and cushion the shocks in the various stages of the crop production process, saving more time, cost of farm operations, marketing, and other resources, when compared to one doing it all alone.
At Rural Farmers Hub (RFH), we recognize the importance of contiguous farming in helping farmers leverage their social networks for the growth and development of their farming businesses. However, most existing cooperatives are not for the sole purpose of contiguous farming, hence they lose the benefits thereof; the smallest farmers manage less than 1 hectare of land, which is 43% of the farming demography while another 21% of farmers manage 1 to 2 hectares. For farmers like Ahmed and Aisha who belong to farming groups, they are leveraging RFH’s services to learn about new farming technologies that allow them to carry out and monitor their farming activities irrespective of their locations.
To get started with contiguous farming, fill this form to enroll for the NIRSAL’s Agric Geo-Cooperative Scheme. If you have any questions, you may click to chat with our customer care team, or contact a NIRSAL officer.
