A smallholder approach to stylo seed production in Nigeria

Abstract
Introduction
Materials and methods
Results
Discussion
References

E. Agishi
National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI)
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

Abstract

The cost of producing Verano stylo and Cook stylo seeds on a local farm was studied at Shika. Labour inputs and costs of all field operations, namely hand stumping, hand piling or heaping, burning, cleaning, cultivation, sowing, fertilizing, weeding, seed harvesting and cleaning, were determined. Data showed that it would require about 180 man-days and N 2400 to produce Verano stylo seed from one hectare of land in the first year, but the figures would be lower in the second and subsequent years. Labour input and field operations costs are higher for production of Cook stylo seed. Where machinery is used in harvesting, both Verano and Cook stylo seed cost less to produce. Seed cleaning, which is done manually, is the most expensive operation, followed by seedbed preparation.

Introduction

The feeding value of natural grasses in Nigeria is normally high early in the wet season, but is extremely low in the dry season. Legumes, on the other hand, remain much higher in quality during the dry season (Blair-Rains, 1963). The introduction of legumes into the natural grassland would therefore improve the quality of the pasture in the dry season. Legumes can be introduced into natural grasslands by oversowing (Blair-Rains, 1963), drilling seeds in harrowed strips (Haggar et al, 1971) or by feeding seed to grazing cattle (Foster, 1961). Alternatively, blocks of pure legumes can be established adjacent to rangeland, and these can be grazed as a supplement to natural grassland (Haggar et al, 1971).

Large-scale use of legumes in most African countries is hampered by lack of seed. Most African countries depend almost entirely on imported seed, but lack of foreign exchange has forced some of these countries to virtually stop pasture development. If adapted legumes are to be used, African countries will have to develop their own seed-production systems, especially for such popular legumes as Stylosanthes hamata.

In order to provide a guide as to how much it would cost to produce seed of some legumes, a small, in-depth on-farm study was undertaken.

Materials and methods

In 1977, a 10-hectare farm was acquired from a local farmer at Shika. The land had been under fallow for more than 8 years and had reverted to true savanna. The vegetation consisted of an Isoberlinia - Hyparrhenia association with Andropogon spp. being co-dominant. Other common grass species were Pennisetum polystachyon, Cymbopogon giganteus and Brachiaria spp. The soil was sandy loam.

The natural vegetation was cleared of shrub growth. Land clearing involved hand stumping using hoes and axes, hand piling or heaping, burning and clearing of unburnt material and re-burning it. Seedbed preparation involved ploughing and harrowing, using a hired tractor. Other operations were sowing, fertilizer application, hand weeding, hand harvesting, sweeping seed from the ground, manual seed cleaning, brushcutting, raking and baling. The labour inputs and cost of each field operation were determined based on 10 labourers out of the many that were employed in each field operation.

After ploughing and harrowing the land, 10 kg of clean, hot-water-treated Verano stylo seed were sown per hectare. Seed of Verano was sown into 5 hectares of the prepared land and the remaining 5 hectares were sown to Cook stylo at the rate of 5 kg seed/ha. Single superphosphate fertilizer was applied at the rate of 31.2 kg P/ha one day after sowing was completed.

Weeding was carried out by hand-hoeing twice when the stylo plants were 6 and 10 weeks old. Verano stylo seed was hand-harvested using sickles, beginning in the first week of December and lasting for 2 weeks.

The first harvest of Cook stylo started in late December. Ripe heads were hand-picked by women. The seed-heads were dried on a concrete floor, threshed, winnowed and further cleaned. The clean seed was weighed, and the mean weight of seeds harvested per day was determined. The Cook stylo stands from which seed had been harvested were brush-cut and the cuttings were raked up and baled. Ripe seeds of Cook and Verano that had fallen on the ground were swept up with brooms by women and cleaned repeatedly. This method of harvesting is termed Method I. The stylo stands were not grazed.

Under Method II, the established pastures of Verano stylo and Cook stylo were grazed between June and mid August, after which the paddock was closed to allow seed formation and maturation. In December, the field was brush-cut, raked and baled. Seed was recovered from the ground using the same method as described above.

Results

Labour inputs and costs of all field operations, including bagging of seed and transportation, are presented in Tables 1 and 2. The Tables show that harvesting, together with seed cleaning, was the highest cost item in the first year Verano stylo (44.5% of the total cost). The supervisor's wages, stumping and weeding represented 20.3, 10.6 and 8.5%, respectively, of the total production cost. In Cook stylo, the order of costs were the same as in Verano stylo. Seed harvesting together with seed recovery from the ground cost N 950/ha and represented 44.8% of the total cost.

Table 1. Labour inputs and cost of producing Cook stylo and Verano stylo under Method I at Shika.

Operations	Verano		Cook
	Man- days	N/ha1	Man- hours	N/ha
1st year
Stumping (manual)	15	250	15	250
Piling or heaping (manual)	5	50	5	50
Burning (2 x)	0.1	5	0.1	5
Clearing unburnt stumps	2	15	2	15
Ploughing (hired tractor)	1	40	1	40
Harrowing (hired tractor)	0.5	20	0.5	20
Seed (10 kg/ha @ N 8.00/kg)	-	80	-	80
Basal nitrogen (100 kg nitrochalk/ha)	-	16	-	16
Single superphosphate (400 kg/ha)	-	64	-	64
Seed and fertilizer broadcasting	1	10	1	10
Weeding (2 x) in Verano stylo	8	200	-	-
Weeding (1 x) in Cook stylo	-	-	4	100
Harvesting with sickles (Verano)	10	150	-	-
Harvesting seed heads by hand (Cook)	-	100	375
Seed sweeping and cleaning	120	900	-	-
Threshing and cleaning (manual)	-	-	100	375
Seed recovery	-	-	50	200
Jute sacks (12 or 3 @ N 4 each)	-	48	-	12
Bagging	1	12	-	10
Transportation of inputs and seed	0.5	20	0.5	20
Supervisor's wages 4 mo @ N 120	-	480	-	480
Hay production	1.8	130	2.5	160
Total	165.9	2490	281.6	2282
2nd year
Single superphosphate (100 kg)
+ broadcasting	1	25	1	25
Weeding (2 x)	10	260	-	-
Weeding (1 x)	-	-	5	130
Harvesting with sickles	12	180	-	-
Harvesting ripe seed heads (manual) -	-	130	500
Sweeping seed and clearing	160	1200	-	-
Threshing and cleaning	-	-	130	500
Seed recovery and cleaning	-	-	100	400
Jute sacks (16 or 4 @ N 4.00)	-	64	-	16
Bagging	1	16	1	12
Transporation of inputs and seed	0.5	20	0.5	20
Supervisor's wages (3 mo @ N 120)	-	360	-	360
Hay production	1.8	130	2.7	240
Total	186.3	2255	370.2	2203

^1. 1 N = US; 1.117 (19/9/85).

Table 2. Labour inputs and cost of producing Cook stylo and Verano stylo under Method II at Shika.

Cost components	Verano		Cook
	Man-days	N/ha	Man- hours	N/ha
Seedbed preparation	23.6	380	23.6	380
Seed and fertilizers	-	160	-	160
Seed and fertilizer broadcasting	1	10	1	10
Brushcutting	0.5	35	1	50
Raking	0.1	10	0.2	10
Baling	0.2	15	0.3	20
Gathering, loading and transporting bales	1	20	1	20
Seed sweeping and cleaning	100	750	150	870
Supervisor's wages (2 mo @ N 120)	-	240	-	240
Transportation of inputs and seed	0.5	20	0.5	20
Total	126.9	1690	177.6	1840
2nd year
Single superphosphate	-	15	-	15
Broadcasting superphosphate	0.5	5	0.5	5
Brushcutting	0.5	35	1.0	50
Raking	0.1	10	0.2	15
Baler twine	-	50	-	100
Baling	0.2	15	0.5	30
Gathering, loading and transporting bales	1	20	1	30
Seed sweeping and cleaning	120	900	200	1250
Supervisor's wages (2 months)	-	240	-	240
Transportation of inputs and seed	0.5	20	1	40
Total	122.8	1410	204.2	1775

In the second-year crops, the main cost items for the two species were again hand-harvesting plus seed recovery and the supervisor's wages, followed by weeding. Harvesting together with seed recovery represented 64.9 and 68.5% for Verano stylo and Cook stylo, respectively.

Many more man-days of work were required to produce seed from the 2-year-old crop than from the first-year crop. Harvesting, together with seed cleaning, required more labour than any other field operation. In both years, Cook stylo required more labour than Verano stylo.

Under Method II (Table 2), seed recovery was the highest cost item in both species, followed by seedbed preparation in the first year and supervisor's wages in the second year.

Seed production was cheaper from Method II than from Method I. Similarly, labour inputs in both years were lower in Method II than in Method I. Labour for seed recovery in year one comprised 78.8 and 84.4% of the total labour inputs for Verano stylo and Cook stylo, respectively. In the second year, labour for seed recovery had increased to 95.3 and 97.9% of the total labour inputs for Verano and Cook stylo, respectively. A summary of the labour inputs is presented in Table 3.

Table 3. Labour inputs in the two methods of Verano stylo and Cook stylo seed production.

Year of production	Labour inputs/ha (man-days)
	Method I		Method II
	Verano	Cook	Verano	Cook
1	165.9	281.6	126.9	177.6
2	186.3	370.2	122.8	204.2

Under both systems, seed yields were higher in the second year than in the first for both species (Table 4). Method I gave higher seed yields than Method II for both species, and this is reflected in the revenues derived from sales (Table 5).

Table 4. Seed and hay yields in Methods I and II (kg/ha and bales/ha).

Year of production	Product	Method I		Method II
		Verano	Cook	Verano	Cook
1	Seed (kg/ha)	600	400	500	350
2	Seed (kg/ha)	500	600	600	500
1	Hay (bales/ha)	250	450	200	400
2	Hay (bales/ha)	300	550	250	500

The cost of producing Verano and Cook stylo on per hectare and per kilogram bases is shown in Table 6. Mean seed production costs for the first 2 years was over N

1420/ha and N 1607/ha for Verano and Cook stylo, respectively. The cost of producing 1 kg of seed was higher in the first year than in the second. Within species differences were small for both methods of seed production.

Profit margins per hectare in the two methods of seed production are presented in Table 7. In Method I, profit margins more than doubled in the second year of production compared with the first year. Only in the first year was the profit margin in Method II higher than in Method I.

Table 5. Expected revenue from clean seed and hay (N/ha).

Year of production	Product	Revenue (N/ha)
		Method I		Method II
		Verano	Cook	Verano	Cook
1	Seed*	3000	3200	2500	2800
2	Seed	4000	4800	3000	4000
1	Hay**	375	675	300	600
2	Hay	450	825	375	750
1	Total	3375	3875	2800	3400
2	Total	4450	5625	3375	4750

* Verano and Cook stylo seeds sold at N 5.00 and N 8.00 per kilogram respectively.
** Bales of hay sold at N 1.50 each.

Table 6. Cost of producing Verano stylo and Cook stylo (N/ ha and N/kg).

Year of production	Method I		Method II
	Verano	Cook	Verano	Cook
	N/ha
1	2360	2122	1560	1680
2	2125	1963	1280	1535
	N/kg
1	3.93	5.26	3.12	5.09
2	2.66	3.27	2.13	3.07

Table 7. Profit margins from the two methods of Verano stylo and Cook stylo seed production (N/ha).

Year of production	Method I		Method II
	Verano	Cook	Verano	Cook
N/ha
1	885	1593	1110	1560
2	2195	3422	1965	2975

Discussion

Pasture legume seed production has not been reported anywhere in Nigeria except at Shika (Agishi, 1978; 1982). The few earlier studies indicated that it costs more to produce legume seeds than grass seeds. Difficulties of under-costing associated with the studies carried out by government institutions were avoided by carrying out the project on a farm outside the research institute. Many items of production were carefully costed in order to arrive at realistic seed-production costs.

The total cost of seed production appears high but could be substantially reduced by using land already in cultivation and by eliminating the supervisor's role. The apparently lower profit margins obtained in Method II are due to no value being included for the benefits the animals derived from grazing. The cattle grazed the stylo seed crops from June to August when there is a shortage of labour for weeding. The money saved by not having to employ labourers for weeding during this period could be used for other farm operations.

In the fodder-bank system, where 4 hectares of land are planted to stylo and fenced, a part of the pasture could be closed for seed production. The farmer could use part of the seed produced on his farm to expand his fodder bank and sell the rest. If this approach is adopted, these agro-pastoralists could form a nucleus for pasture seed production in this country.

References

Agishi E C. 1978. Pasture seed production of grasses and legumes. NAPRI Annual Report, 1977/78.

Agishi E C. 1982. Verano stylo - a promising new legume for the Nigerian savannas. National Conference on Beef Production, Kaduna, Nigeria. Mimeo. 19 pp.

Blair-Rains A. 1963. Grassland research in Northern Nigeria, 1952-62. Inst. Agric. Res., Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. Samaru Misc. Paper No. 1. 70 pp.

Foster W H. 1961. Notes on the establishment of a legume in rangeland in northern Nigeria. Emp. J. Exp. Agric. 29: 319-322.

Haggar R J. de Leeuw P N and Agishi E. 1971. The production and management of Stylosanthes gracilis at Shika, Nigeria. II. In savanna grassland. J. Agric. Sci. (Camb). 77: 437-44.