Agro-economic policies should not be a function of sentiments and politics but sound economics. Ranching, which some governors favour, will deliver beef to the market at a higher cost than that of the U.S. if finally adopted, because the landing cost of the equipment and services will make the price of beef completely unreachable for most households.
The third and most important, most times, is that the herder is the pharmacist, nurse and doctor of his cattle through a deep understanding of plants in the forest, passed to him by his ancestors from generation to generation, and which has now been lost to most sedentary people. This may not be an exactly preferred veterinary medical practice, but it helps him keep his cost low.
I am not a Fulani, but I grew up in New-Bussa, Niger State, and in Kwara State, surrounded by Fulani settlements. I did not grow up with the consciousness of seeing Fulanis as oppressors seeking to grab anyone’s land as it is now the narrative, because of the almost abject poverty of most of them that I knew while growing up. As a matter of fact, we had a lot of them as our helps, and we respected them and learnt a lot from their wisdom and simplicity.
My economic instinct tells me that we may have ignored very important lessons from the best local expert in cattle rearing and management – the Fulani herder – in our emotionally driven path to create a new livestock management system. The last time I checked, the cost of a fairly used 18,000-acre ranch in Argentina was a whopping $10 million . Hundreds of such ranches would be needed, plus the landing cost, the cost of corruption, cost of delayed delivery, ports congestion, etc. I understand that some people don’t mind the higher cost of beef, as long as we ‘deal with the Fulanis’.
The policy of developing grazing reserves must, however, not be imposed on any state that does not want it; after all, ‘land use’ under the Nigerian Constitution is within the jurisdiction of state governments. Those who want to breed their cattle at five times the present cost have the fundamental human right to choose that, and those who want to breed their cattle at low costs also have rights to do so; that is what true federalism means.
Such an interesting piece of opinion that should be of interest to everyone that has an opinion on the Fulani herdsmen crisis. Thank you sir.
Getting cheap meat at the expense of human blood and crop damages