Maize farming
Maize is one of the main cereal crops of West Africa. It is the fourth most consumed cereal during the past two decades, after sorghum, millet and rice in Nigeria. Maize is the world’s highest supplier of calorie with caloric supply of about 19.5%. It provides more calorie than rice (16.5%) and wheat (15.0%). It is one of the most important staple foods in the world today. Maize is also the most important staple food in Nigeria and it has grown to be local ‘cash crop’ most especially in the south-western part of Nigeria where at least 30% of the crop land has been devoted to small-scale maize production under various cropping systems
USES OF MAIZE IN NIGERIA
Maize is a staple food for about 50% of Sub-Sahara African population. It is an important source of carbohydrate, protein, iron, vitamin B and minerals. As food, the whole grain, freshly green or dried, may be used or may be processed traditionally by wet and dry milling methods to give a variety of food products. Preparation and uses of maize alone or in combination with other food material as staple food or snacks in Nigeria include the followings: ogi (in hot and cold forms), tuwo, donkunnu, maasa, couscous, akple, gwate, nakia, egbo, abari, donkwa, ajepasi, aadun, kokoro, elekute etc.
The bulk of the concentrated feed to farm animals consist of grains, and maize is the most important and preferred one due to its low cost (compared to other cereals), low fiber content and high starch content which consist of concentrated energy food that gives highest conversion of dry substance to meat, milk and eggs. Maize stover, which is the plant residue after the ear has been removed (contains 30 to 40% of the plants total nitrogen, 75% of the potassium, sulphur and magnesium and almost all the calcium) is used by many farmers in developing countries as roughage feed for livestock.
MAIZE FARMING IN NIGERIA
Increase in maize farming in Nigeria has been achieved greatly by expansion in area harvested rather than increase in yield. The area harvested increased from 2.8 million hectares in 1986 to over 3 million hectares in 2000 and over 6 million hectares by 2011. Of the total world production (1,133,540 M tons) in 2018, Nigeria, the largest producer in Sub-Sahara Africa produced 11 million tons representing 0.009% of the world production. Based on production potentials, Nigeria has been divided into four groups namely low, medium, medium to high and high maize production potential.
The average yield of maize farming in Nigeria as in other Sub-Sahara Africa countries is generally low 1.68 tons/hectare, which is very low compared to average yield in United States 9.3 tons/hectare over the same period.
LIMITATION OF MAIZE FARMING IN NIGERIA
In view of the importance of maize farming in Nigeria, efforts are continuously made to increase maize farming yield per unit area of land and to extend areas where it can be grown, especially the cultivation of dry areas as improved through irrigation. Traditionally, maize has been mostly grown in forest ecology in Nigeria but large scale maize farming in Nigeria has moved to the savanna zone, especially the Northern Guinea savanna, where yield potential is much higher than in the forest. The environmental conditions required for maize farming in Nigeria are therefore, superior in the savanna zone with high solar radiation, less incidence of biotic stresses and natural dryness at time of harvest
However, in spite of all efforts, maize farming in Nigeria yields, like in many other Sub-Saharan countries, is still very low compared to developed countries due to many constraints, which may be biotic, abiotic agronomic or others like low soil fertility, pests and diseases, drought, unavailability of improved germplasm, weeds, un-remunerative prices, uncertain access to markets etc.