On the bright side of yam production

As the orange sunlight fades, a trail of women make their way home from the market on the thin brown footpaths of Kogi State. On their heads, they carry baskets of yam, arguably the most important crop in Nigeria. Known as the 'king of crops', yam is not just grown for its nutritional value, but also for its cultural significance. More than 95 per cent of the world's yams are grown in sub-Saharan Africa, and Nigeria is the leading producer. But many yam farmers face problems with declining productivity; planting material is scarce and prone to disease. An expanding human population means increased pressure on the land to produce more food, resulting in shorter fallow periods which allow pests and pathogens to build up in the soil, and declining soil fertility.

Seeds at a cost

credit: IITA

Yams (Dioscorea spp.) rarely produce seed. Instead they are vegetatively propagated through planting pieces of yam tuber. But, diseases can be carried over from one crop to the next in the tubers, and productivity will remain low. A livelihoods study in Kogi State, Nigeria, found that roughly 70 per cent of yam production costs were for planting material. Sister Felicitas Ogbodo is the current coordinator of the Diocesan Development Services DDS, an NGO based in Kogi state. She explains: "If farmers are to get disease free seed yams, they need to go outside the state, which increases the cost of the seed yam." And there is no guarantee that once the seed yam is bought, it will be disease free. What farmers need is an affordable source of 'clean' or disease-free planting material of the varieties they prefer.

Grow your own

One option is for farmers to grow their own disease free material. The 'minisett technique' was developed several years ago as a means of rapidly multiplying yam. It is a two-stage process that produces many small 'seed' yams in the first year, which can then be grown in the second year to produce larger 'ware' yams suitable for eating and trade. Researchers have been working with farmers in Nigeria to adapt the technique to farmers' needs. First of all, the planting material is cut into small pieces called 'setts', of 50-100g.

The setts are dipped in a mixture of a fungicide and nematicide, which will knock out infection already present in the setts and protect them from being infected by disease when planted in the soil. Only the cut setts are treated because these are the most susceptible to infection or infestation. By only treating the cut setts used for producing seed yams, costs are kept to a minimum and any environmental hazards from the pesticides is kept low, while still breaking the disease cycle.

Show me the money!

But growing yams takes time and effort and it is generally perceived as risky business - even using the adapted minisett technique. It takes two years for the small yam pieces to grow into larger ware yams that can be eaten or sold. At the start of the cropping season, funds are at their lowest, and this is when the main costs of production such as planting material, pesticides and labour occur. Farmers are then forced to sell their crop as early as possible, even when the price is low. How can farmers ensure that they have the necessary funds at the start of each growing season?

A micro-credit system based on traditional rotational savings was developed so that farmers could borrow money at the start of the farming season. With support from the Irish charity GORTA, the Farmers Enterprise and Economic Development (FEED) programme was set up, specifically to grow clean yam seeds. Yam growers are able to make an application based on a viable business plan, for a loan to pay for planting material, pesticides and some labour costs. When the yams are harvested and the growers can sell surplus seed yams, they will pay back the loan, and a revolving fund is formed.

Listening at the grass-roots

Sister Felicitas believes that the relationship DDS has with local people has encouraged trust. "We know them so well, we know their family. Farmers also have more trust and more confidence in the organisation from their own experience." There are other NGOs in the area which farmers do not trust, because they are new or because they have let local people down. Dr Andrew Ward, deputy manager of the DFID-funded Crop Protection Programme (CPP), lived in Kogi State for four years: "It is really important that we do not just look at total amounts of crop produced without thinking about how much the crop is appreciated. If we are trying to improve people's livelihoods, that means improving people's enjoyment of life". And with production increased three-fold, it looks like yams can be the king of crops in Nigeria once again.

This work was funded by the DFID CPP and carried out by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) in the UK.