March 11, 2020

Empowering Fulani women and youth to become modern dairy farmers

Animal Production Related

Nigeria

With more than 180 million inhabitants, the annual demand for milk and other dairy products in Nigeria is estimated at around 1.3 billion tons, which represents a huge market for locally produced milk. Unfortunately, 60% of the dairy products consumed in the country are imported.

Improving the productivity of local dairy cows by introducing cross-breeding programs and improved feed and forage is part of the 2SCALE program’s key interventions in its dairy partnerships. Therefore, the 2SCALE partner FrieslandCampina Wamco in Nigeria intends to develop local production capacity and supply of fresh milk by investing in critical infrastructure and capacity building needs to create guaranteed market, empower and integrate local Fulani milk producers who are mostly women into this supply chain.

Fulani love and cherish their traditional nomadic system but considering climate change with its adverse effect on communal grazing, the system is threatened and most likely not sustainable anymore. 2SCALE consider gradual integration of smallholder dairy farming into Fulani communities as alternative business opportunity.

In Alaga, a Fulani community in the South-West Nigeria, 2SCALE organize interactive discussion between master farmers of the FDOV project (The Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Food Security Facility project - a cooperation between FrielandCampina WAMCO Nigeria plc., IFDC, Stichting Wageningen Research (Wageningen Livestock Research) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands) and Fulani women and youth cooperatives to share experience and agree on collaboration and way forward in dairy business while copying some of the standards of good dairy farming practices through demonstrations and farm visits. The main outcome of this farmer-to-farmer training is to empower women and youth in this community to move from milk producers to modern smallholder dairy farmers.

Cross-breeds and management of dairy cows

Mr Alatunde Rafiu is a young dairy farmer and owner of the Junior Dairy Farms Ltd located in Iseyin, Oyo state. He is one of the FDOV master farmers. Rafiu is convinced of the profitability and sustainability in dairy farming. Thus, he wants the Fulani farmers to understand that the only way to move forward in the dairy business is to come together as one as a cooperative; to move from their local cows to cross-bred cows through artificial insemination.

During the first phase of the program, 2SCALE brought to the FDOV farmers imported semen to inseminate into their local cows. This gave them cross-breeds that are genetically modified for milk production. These cows have the potential to produce 10 liters per day per cow.

Mr Rafiu advises the Fulani dairy farmers on the proper management of dairy cows, because these are different from their indigenous cows. He also emphasized the importance of cross-bred cows in milk production.

From our local cows, the maximum liters per day we can get is 2 liters whereas with this new method of cross breeding we can get more than 10 liters from one cow per day. Our cash-flow has increased because we’re getting an average of 10 liters per day per cow which has really boosted our income

From open grazing to zero grazing

One of the challenges is the nomadic way of farming. For the Fulanis, the land belongs to God. Therefore, they are free to graze their cattles wherever there is grass. That is the reason why there are a lot of clashes between cattle herders and crops farmers.

With the intervention of 2SCALE in terms of seeds and advice on how to plant grass and to feed cows, the clashes between dairy farmers and crops farmers has come to an end in my area. In addition, 2SCALE connected us with input suppliers and now we are getting good quality medication and injections to treat our cows, and good quality dairy feed for them

2SCALE supports local dairy farmers, under its partnership with FrieslandCampina Wamco, to get together, gives them technical advice and how to improve their dairy farming and make profit from it so as to raise the standard of dairy farming in Nigeria.

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