Nigeria groundnut farmers should exploit therapeutic food market – Experts

Nigeria groundnut farmers has been urged to take advantage of the over $600 million Ready to Use Th erapeutic food (RATF) market. Th e country director of TechnoServe, Mr. Larry Umunna, gave the advice recently at the launch of the Nigeria Agricultural Food Security and Nutrition Strategy in Abuja.

Umunna lamented the situation where groundnut used for the Ready to Use Th erapeutic foods supplied to North east as part of the federal government’s eff ort in collaboration with other international agencies to fi ght malnutrition in the region are brought from South Africa, when Nigeria produces thousands of tons of groundnut yearly. “We know that the active ingredient in ready to use supplementary food used for prevention of malnutrition and in preparing therapeutic food is groundnut and Nigeria requirement for Ready to Use Th erapeutic foods (RATF) is about 4500mt a year but it has also been estimated that the potential market for ready to use supplementary food is almost $600 million. “Unfortunately, all the RATF in this country are imported.

A company in Lagos has spent the last one year to set up a factory to ensure that RATF are supplied to relief and humanitarian agencies. Despite spending so much money, it has not supplied any food. It imports groundnut pastes from South Africa and we have 5.4 million small-holders farmers in Nigeria that grows groundnut,” he explained. He said there should be no excuses for not using Nigeria groundnut as the small holder farmers cultivating groundnut could be given good agronomic practices trainings that would enable them to farm their groundnut to international standard. “So we need to fi nd ways to sell nutrition as a business, Nigeria is the third largest producer of groundnut and there is a big markets, nutrition must be sold to the private sector as a business but most important government must help them to address the issues that are preventing them from getting high quality nutritious crops in the country.

“Th ey should be given good agronomic practices, teaching them farming as a business, working with organisation like IITA, the inputs suppliers to ensure that those small holders’ farmers produce high quality crops that they are mobilised and sell to the companies. “Government need to sell the benefi ts to the private sector, for them to understand that it is business and most importantly, the government need to unlock some of the regulatory mechanisms or hindrance that may be preventing private sector companies from going into those areas,” he said.

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