Professor Akin Adesehinwa on piggery

Pig farming is fast becoming popular in Nigeria, especially in the South-West region of the country.



 Recently, Big Dutchman Agriculture Nigeria Limited organised a Pig Management Seminar in Abeokuta, Ogun State . 
On the side-lines of the seminar, Professor Akin Adesehinwa, a Research Scientist with the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, IAR&T, Moor Plantation Ibadan, who is also a member of Council, Nigeria Institute of Animal Science (NIAS), whose primary field of focus is pig production in Nigeria spoke exclusively to AgroNigeria on pig production in the country emphasising on the need to adopt Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) to boost pig production in the country.

Can you give us an overview of this seminar?

I initiated this with the management of Big Dutchman Nigeria Limited. They have been in Nigeria before now, but they were initially into poultry equipment sales. So, when they wanted to divest into pig equipment sales, they approached me, knowing fully well that it is my area of specialisation. We suggested practitioners. They were directly involved in the invitation of participants who have capabilities of buying their equipment not just anybody. So, that is what informed the high level of participants. But as for government agencies, there are some officials from the Ministries of Agriculture in some states, represented here. IAR&T as much as it is affiliated with Obafemi Awolowo University, is under Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN) which is an affiliate of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. So, government is well represented. And the output of this particular workshop will definitely get to the government and you saw that when we were rounding up, there was an agreement for suggestions for future that is in 2018. A similar workshop, if not more than one would be held but focus will be on another area where farmers need further training. One thing that came off from this workshop is the admonition to desist from feeding pigs with sole ingredients. Nigerian farmers also heard from foreign experts that feeding rightly give good returns on investments. Your management practices must be correct.

Can you provide more details on Nigeria’s pig production?

There is a pig village in Oke Aro. It was established by the Lagos State Government as a temporary site for pig producers. Oke Aro came after the urban development of Oko Oba around Agege area and then pig farmers were later moved to Oke Aro. Oke Aro was over populated with all manner of practitioners who never adhered to good agricultural practice. We then proposed to government, to establish another estate called Gberigbe. Even at a time, developers were acquiring lands at Gberigbe for a housing estate.  Government halted the move by developers and insisted that pig production should follow good agricultural practice.  Farmers were given an opportunity to erect good structures and imbibe good sanitary measures, but they didn’t adhere to that. Some even wanted to erect permanent structures for residence to reduce the pressure on Oko Oba. Government still restricted them. During the African swine fever surge many years back, it ravaged a lot because of the low level of hygiene. There is also the Kafanchan pig market. Kafanchan assembles pigs produced from all areas around Kafanchan, and some other parts of the country. Up to 10,000 herds of pigs are sold here, every Thursday all year round. Again, the practice in Kafanchan is nothing near good agricultural practice. It is supposed to be a market, with water supply, toilet facilities, confinement areas for the animals but these do not exist there. The place is so dirty, and muddy. So, those are some of the challenges we have with these two locations.

What has government done to improve the sanitary condition of this market?

Talking about Kafanchan, the people and the local government area are guilty because they are not doing things the way it should be done. A survey showed that the authorities collected money from every person per head of pig that is brought to that place for sale. And Kafanchan gets patronage from Republic of Benin and Cameroon. Monies collected are not spent on the market. The last time I visited, there were no toilet facilities and water there. There is a very shallow well there which does not supply the volume of water needed to process the pork or the meat after slaughtering. There is smuggling and importation of agricultural commodities like rice and fish.

Does the pig sub-sector suffer from smuggling and importation?

I would just say pork product is not smuggled into Nigeria. Chicken is the main meat imported into Nigeria. But importation of chicken indirectly affects pig production. When the market is flooded with imported chicken, even when pig is available, it will attract less patronage. So, those are some of the challenges that you see. The stock of animals that the farmers are actually working with, they are not the animals of proven genetic line when we talk of the major breed whether large, wide, land race, durrock. We had one international pig summit in 2010 in Ibadan, after which a number of organisations, governments and then private individuals imported pigs into Nigeria. One of them was the National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI). They sold them as weaners, as well as sold the semen doses. Female animals can be inseminated with the semen that is being produced from such locations.

Can you throw more light on the conference, its achievements and why another edition has not been held?

Yes. Another edition of it has not been held because of fund. But that has not in any way limited us; there is a Nigerian Institute of Animal Science (NIAS), which has the mandate to regulate the practice of animal science in Nigeria. Ever since then, NIAS has done a lot with respect to what was imported by IAR&T such as semen doses. Most farmers buy imported semen from the artificial insemination unit of the IAR&T, in Ikenne. They either buy the doses or make requests and the doses are taken to their farms and their animals inseminated. The Benue State government under the former governor, Gabriel Suzwan imported some pigs into Benue and kept them in the College of Agriculture, Yandev. The college also sells weaners to prospective farmers who are willing to buy. They have durrock breed, land race, large white, pitrin, gene converter 750, which is also in the country and there are also private farmers like Joel Daniel who also imported pigs into Nigeria from whom other Nigerian farmers buy breeding stock. You have spoken profoundly on genetics and the IAR&T’s role in this regard.

What is the role of IAR&T in improving the quality of feed that pig farmers can access?

Good genetic stock improves productivity in animal breeding. Whether it is land race, large white, or durrock. We mostly raise mongrels here. You cannot expect what is not good to bring out what is good. And when you have animal breeds of good genetics, they have performance traits that have been researched into and known worldwide. Good feeds must have good source of energy (maize, processed cassava products, or corn brand), protein (groundnut cake, soybean or the animal protein sources fishmeal, shrimp waste meal), multivitamins, minerals (calcium, phosphorus, salt) incorporated in them. Farmers here feed their pigs with single ingredients. Pigs are either fed with brewery waste, noodle industry waste or cassava peels. Worse, these wastes are fed to pigs in single form, not together as energy sources, protein sources, fibre sources, compounded to form feed. That is where the problem lies. There are customised feeds produced by some companies. A farmer can even produce these feeds on his farm, when he knows how to. So IAR&T provides training in this regard. In fact, last week some of the people here were at IAR&T for training. They were trained on feed production to enable them produce feeds and also on identifying stock of animal that should be used for breeding. It is not just any animal that can be used for breeding. Nigeria has a population between 7 and 8 million pigs, positioning Nigeria as number 21 in global pig production.

How can we improve this record? 

We have more pigs in Nigeria than that figure. But we do not have good data base of our pigs.  We need a structured market, processing and value addition to our products. But most of the pigs produced, are sold at farm gate by the farmers. Farmers do not also have a target market for their produce. Therefore, they mainly sell off their pigs when the animals have gotten to the stage when the man can no longer feed. That is why buyers take advantage of them. I have instructed the Pig Farmers Association of Nigeria to deploy members to the other value chains like sourcing markets. For instance, something near that is done in Oke Aro. There is a section of them that sources for markets, and others engage in producing feeds. There is a cooperative that provides feed for farmers on credit. They pay back when they sell their animals. Government is doing a little. However, the little that is being done can still move the farmers forward. But the practitioners are not doing it the right way. If they are doing it the right way and they can get the right market, they will be more profitable. Rather than people taking advantage of them, buying at farm gate price and then the people standing as intermediaries between the pig producers and the market.

Do we have mills that produce feeds for pigs in Nigeria?

Feed for poultry for instance is not imported. The ingredients are produced in Nigeria. There are quite a lot of them that are into feed production. You have Livestock Feed PLC, Animal Care. What is imported are the ingredients used in producing the premixes or fish meal that is the 72 per cent imported fishmeal. They are not formulated feeds which are completely banned. So what a feed producing company can only tell you is that it gets the formula from a foreign body but they are producing with the ingredients sourced from Nigeria. So feeds for pigs are produced in Nigeria.

How best can we manage piggery faeces and urine (wastewater) instead of direct discharge into our water ways, increasing pollution and also to reduce odour? 

We must ensure pig production is environment-friendly. Permit me to cite a company known as JSR Genetics in UK. In fact, the imported animals were actually gotten from them by the IAR&T. JSR Genetics also produce potatoes in the UK and they are the Queen Elizabeth best producers of potatoes every year. How did they come about this? They use the wastes, talking of the faeces and the urine that they get from their pig facilities, they convert them into slurry and then organic manure. Sometime in Taiwan when I visited in 2005, I discovered that for you to buy poultry wastes or pig wastes, you must book them. It is still laziness on our part. Lots of money could be made from piggery wastes. In Ojo, Lagos, poultry wastes are used to improve the quality of the soil for vegetable farming. Trailer loads of poultry or pig wastes are sent to the Northern part of the country to improve the quality of soil. So, it is just what I talked about in the workshop with respect to Good Agricultural Practices. That is, you channel your wastes to a particular area, either you have a deep collection point that you gather the wastes together, and from time to time the way you have the septic tanks or the soakaway, and then this is suctioned and taken out. As the pit is being filled, you are moving them out or pumping them into the field for crop production. So, this is a way out. In so many parts of the world, lots of people also produce biogas with this wastes and they make sure it is airtight and there is a way you can produce gas to run everything in your house without any external source of gas.

What is your advice to farmers on how to improve local pig production in Nigeria? 

All I will say is that our farmers should do it right so that they can get good returns on the investment and then the industry can grow.

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