Experts in organic agriculture have called for more concerted efforts by stakeholders for Nigeria and other West African countries to access enormous opportunities in organic agricultural produce and products.

They made the call in Abuja at a two-day conference with the theme “Development of a Harmonised Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) standard for West Africa.”

Jude Obi, president of the Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria, said the West Africa region must access its quotas from the inestimable amount of money available for organic agriculture globally.

Mr Obi said that the development of organic agriculture could comfortably address the challenge of food security and increase foreign exchange earnings, stifling the economy in the region.

He expressed concern that the African continent and West Africa were yet to scratch the surface of their own quota in organic agriculture trade.

“Now, the West African organic agriculture landscape is evolving—clearly evolving—but the opportunity is massive.

“The amount of money available for organic agriculture in the world is inestimable. And for us in Africa and West Africa, we are not even scratching it.

“So, this is an effort to expand the horizon, make trade easy, make people interested in organic agriculture, increase production, which is very important and earn the much-needed foreign exchange.

“Which is one of the things that is stifling the economy of West Africa and, by extension, Africa.

“It is clear that both the African continent and West Africa are not scratching the surface. They are not scratching the surface of their own quota in the organic agriculture trade,” he said.

Mr Obi said the essence of the conference was to ensure that organic agriculture gets rooted in the region to address the challenge of food security and earn more foreign exchange in the region.

“We are gathered here, importantly, because organic agriculture is gaining traction in West Africa, Africa and the world. And it is not organic if it does not have guidance or traceability.

“So, traceability is very important in organic agriculture. We are here to establish a protocol for traceability in organic agriculture in West Africa.

“If we are able to achieve this, then there will be easy trade within the sub-region.

“This traceability we are talking about, we call it participatory guarantee scheme. It is the lower level of traceability simply because we have two levels of traceability.

“The first one is a third party. The second one is the participatory guarantee scheme. This participatory guarantee scheme is designed for farmers.

“Third parties are expensive and organic agriculture prepares itself to bring in everybody.

“So, a participatory guarantee scheme is a process through which a small farmer who doesn’t have a large quantity of money to go through a third party can still establish their traceability, have standards, have certification and be able to trade just like every other person.

“And most importantly, have premium prices because the target is premium prices. So, we have gathered here to establish a protocol for a participatory guarantee scheme for the West African region,” he said.

Oyewole Gbadamosi, coordinator of the Ecological Organic Agriculture Initiative in West Africa, said in his submission that organic agriculture would enhance global trade, promotion of exports, and exportation of material, among others, in the region.

According to him, the conference was planned to facilitate the development of a regional standard for organic agriculture in the West African states.

“It is aimed at creating a short supply chain for product movements across the member states and we are gathered here to do exactly that,” he said.

He said that the conference would, among others, address the issue of verification in terms of the quality of things that are produced organically.

“We have had many products labelled organic and others that are not. I have also had different regulations that have not been followed, particularly in some West African states, where we do have regulations on organic agriculture.

“So this particular workshop is to provide the working documents for certification and reference labels for organic products, to serve as a value addition for the organic products, and to increase the credibility of the products while moving across the region.

“We are expecting that this can be a giant stride for the development of organic agriculture in the region, while working hard to see that we are able to even leverage on some of the other important things that this particular initiative brings.”

Kofi Emanuel, programme officer of Rural Development and Land Government at the ECOWAS Commission, Department of Economic Affairs and Agriculture, said the development of organic agriculture would address the challenge of food security in the region.

Mr Emmanuel, who is also the chairman of the Ecological Organic Agriculture Initiative Secretariat in West Africa, stressed the need for the harmonisation of standards across member states.

“I cannot say that there is no standard. There are standards in the member states. People are producing organic products for free trade across our member states.

“We need to harmonise these standards. That is why we are doing this now. We are working.

“You know, in our agriculture, if you compare our practice to that of other countries on other continents, we can say that we are seeing the area of ecological organic agriculture because we use less of our fertilisers.

“The chemical fertilisers are very few. We are about 18 to 24 kilogrammes per hectare. Even compared to those in Asia, who are 300 kilogrammes, there are more than 320 kilogrammes per hectare.

“Our agriculture is still ecological and organic. It feeds its population. So we need to have the label; we need the standard for it,” he said.

He equally harped on the need for access to technology, sharing of information, research and developing the capacity of our farmers for the development of the sector.

“So, the capacity-building issue is very important for our farmers and our organization. We need certification. It’s very important.

“If you go to the market, your products are not certified. If you don’t have a label on your products, it cannot be made visible. So it’s very important to do all these processes,” he said.

He agreed that organic agriculture might not be able to feed the entire population in the region but can contribute significantly to feeding them.

“Organic agriculture can contribute to feeding this population; it can contribute to producing and taking into account our soil health.

“But we cannot feed all our population through only organic agriculture. We need to manage, taking into account the necessity to preserve the fertility of our soil and to tackle all the challenges we have to face,” he said.

(NAN)