Lack of organic regulations has given rise to exploitation of Nigeria farmers in the international market, says NICERT Limited Managing Director, Annabel Kamuche in this interview with JOHN OBA.
Tell us about your NICERT?
NICERT limited that is working in partnership with Ecocert of France. Ecocert is a world leading conformity assessment and certification body. It is a third party conformity assessment certification body that has been accredited to certify more than 98 different standard and this standards includes global gap, fair trade, organic and also includes standard like ifs, acid, BRC, etc and different international standards that will help your products get to lucrative formal markets.
How do you rate the organic sectors in Nigeria
Despite lack of organic law or regulation in the country, people are able to come up with participatory guarantee system (PGS) where individuals within a close circuit can be certified and that standard has been complied with. It is just for the local market to be able to sell and the National Organic Association of Nigeria (NOAN) who is also championing the efforts to ensure standard is not compromised. I think with this, the organic standard is very high and they are doing wonderfully well but with statutory regulatory standards body, the Nigerian organic agricultural products will go places.
What is the difference between Nigerian Agriculture Quarantine Services and NICERT
Nigerian Agriculture Quarantine Service is mandated to focus on disease and pest control in agricultural products coming into and going out of the country. Their mandate emanated from World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement which Nigeria is signatory to and that is why they were able to issue what is called the phytosanitary certificate. However, our own is a different international regulatory body. Some of them are legal, for instance, organic standard is a legal standard. Countries that have organic regulations have standard for you to sell your products in those countries as organic and they also have third party certification bodies like Nicert/Ecocert thathave been accredited to ensure you comply with those standards before you can sell those products to US, Europe or Japan or any of these countries that have organic regulations that this product has complied with the standards and they are actually organic.
Once they see that logo, they know you have complied so, they don’t need to second guess and also, fair trade for instance, is an ethical standard. What fair trade means is that it is standard that a group of people came together and said there are some of this crops that is tedious as far as primary level is concern. We want to ensure that people who are in primary level get a fair share of what we are consuming in the supermarket. If you are in the cocoa primary level of production for instance, there is a lot of works to be done and they want to be sure that every chocolate that they buy, people in the primary levels get a fair share like there’s no child labour, no forced labour, ensure good working conditions. So, they are basically focused on the people in the primary levels just to ensure that they have good working conditions for sustainability, so to speak. A lot of people look out for those kinds of certification just for conscience sake, to be certain that people who are producing the products consumed are not suffering. Just for example, like blood diamond, you know I don’t want to buy blood diamond in which people have to be killed or be forced to labour for them to get the diamond out. These are the kind of standards that people are looking out for. A lot of countries have this food safety standard just to ensure that their people whatever it is they are producing even in their countries are also applicable. Even some products that are produced in their countries also need some certain levels of safety standards.
It seems there is a lack of organic standard and regulation in the country….?
Generally speaking, Nigeria right now does not have an organic regulation, so every ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’ can just come tomorrow and say look my product is organic and nobody can question it because having an organic regulations means that there are procedures you must follow for your products to comply with that standards and to be certified as organic. But right now, because Nigeria does not have any organic regulation means nobody can say for instance, why are you putting organic in your products, what protocol you followed to ensure that the product is organic?. You will find a lot of people claiming that their products are organic but when you ask them where they are getting the product from, you’ll realise that there is no traceability and they don’t even know where they are growing it from, just like the tiger nut are being bought from the market yet they claim it is organic.
What efforts are you making to ensure Nigeria regulate organic agriculture?
We are working with National Organic Association of Nigeria (NOAN) that is pushing for Nigeria to have its own organic regulation. More than just having organic regulation, we are pushing for Nigerian products to be able to get into the formal markets because right now, a lot of Nigerian products are going into the re-exporting markets. What re-exporting means is that, they are going into the market that re-exports these products to other markets. They are not a consuming market they are not markets that will use it to produce something so that the country’s name can be on the export index as part of countries that exports this products. Ginger or cashew for instance, Nigeria is the 2nd largest producer of cashew in the world but 96 per cent of Nigerian cashew is exported to Vietnam but Vietnam is not the country that consume these cashews, they actually re-exports this cashew to the formal markets like US, European, UK and the likes. These are the markets where they have the consumers. So you will never get a good price if you are exporting your products to re-exporting markets who will now homogenized it. If you look at the index, you will realise that Vietnam is the highest exporters of cashew and Nigeria is not in the radar. The reason being that when you export products to other countries like Vietnam, they will homogenized it and it becomes theirs. The same thing is happening with our ginger, hibiscus etc. We are not entering into those formal market and formal markets require standards and certification for your products to be able to enter into those prime markets.
What’s the federal government doing about regulation?
Right now, we are still discussing with them on general food safety in Nigeria, not only on organic products especially in the primary level. Every farmer should be able to know that even if I’m producing organic or conventional foods, there are ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of the industry. There are things for preservation that cannot be used. If the industry is regulated especially for primary levels, there are things like fertilisers that you cannot use not every pesticides or herbicides. That is one step. We have been advocating for local standards for them to domesticate theGlobal Good Agricultural Practice Standards, (GAP) like Ghana has done. People are able to produce things according to the global good agricultural practices where fertilizers have to be checked, to ensure that the residues do not have long time impact on consumers. Who is checking whether farmers use correct and accurate measure of farm chemical input and also wait for the expiration of life span of the chemical before they harvest? Nobody is checking that. Nobody is checking what is being brought into our market. What NAFDAC is checking is processed food, they only ensure processing facilities meet some sort of standard that they use and all of that but, for instance if you are doing tomato purry, who is checking to ensure that farmers do not use pesticide the life span says 30 days and in 10 days, so of somebody come to buy it and it is harvested before the time, the residue of the pesticide will remain on the output. Who ensures that at the primary level there is good agricultural practice, or that the food safety standards are adhere to. Nobody is seeing into these regulations and they are not even available not to talk of the higher standards which is the organic standards where we are saying look, don’t use any synthetic pesticides and herbicides, biodiversity, environmental care and all of that. We have to even start with one step and you know how to get to the other side because the organic market is growing geometrically and that is actually the best way to live to ensure that there is no cancer, organ failure and all of that which people are passing through. We have the land to grow organic and organic market is growing in the US. In 2017, organic market grew up to $58 billion and it is growing geometrical. In Europe and Japan, people are beginning to see it as the next ways to be able to live a good life and we have the opportunity. There are just six organic certified farms in Nigeria not one of it belongs to a Nigerian. In fact, they have hibiscus, ginger, monringa, tiger nut farm that is organic certified. Price different between conventional products and organic is like heaven and earth. Let’s take monringa oil for instance, conventional monringa oil is peanut, the organic monringa oil is 40 dollars per kilogram that means per ton is about 40,000 dollars the same goes for ginger. Conventional ginger today is about 1100 dollar while organic ginger is about 3500 dollar, the same thing with hibiscus which is zobo. The price for the organic certified hibiscus is about 4000 to 5000 dollars so it huge. For the commercial aspect of it, let’s look at the business angles because it makes business sense for us to look at going organic.
What’s NICERT’s view on GMOs.
For us, we 100 per cent against GMOs because of the long term effects. When we hear food security, what do you put first? Do you put the cart before the horse, the chick before the egg or the egg before the chick?
For instance, I want you to eat a lot of foods, is it safe to consume a lot of poisonous food or consume little and live a healthy life, which one is better? These genetically modified foods has a lot of chemical to grow or produce it thereby resulted in a lot of health issues which Nigeria does not even have the facility to combat. There are lots of push back even in the US for genetically modified foods. In fact, it is almost non existence. They usually pushed it through the Clinton Foundations and other foundation that are pushing for food security in Africa and then it is not happening in a lot of African countries. But unfortunately for us, Nigeria has accepted the GMO seeds
Your advice to government on organic agric products?
My advice to the government is for us to firstly, our own organic agricultural regulation for food safety especially at the production level and more so to have an organic regulation since we have the land and we have the people. We also have organic in the wild where we have a lot of palm trees growing. Those are what is called organic in the wild. We have a lot of cashews and a lot of opportunities that we can explore in the wild to annex and boost agriculture. If we decide to have organic regulations and we can decide to have what is called equivalent. If for instance, we take the national organic programme (NOP) of US, and domesticate it to become the Nigerian Organic Regulation, we can now start to look for what is called equivalent so that if you are able to comply with the Nigerian organic protocol, then it now easy for you to sell your organic products in US because we have been able to get equivalents.
