Opinion: Ranching System Can Make Nigeria Among The Top 10 Producers Of Milk

With the consensus that ranching is the way forward, I would like to see Nigeria set herself the goal of becoming a top 10 milk producer by 2030

We are shamelessly a net importer of milk at the moment. In 2019, Nigeria only produced a paltry 523,599 tonnes of milk domestically.

We consume about 1.3bn tonnes of milk annually, so spend between $1.2bn and $1.5bn annually to bridge the gap between production and consumption. Once we have these mega ranches in place, we must set them steep milk production targets.

Once more, we simply refuse to be productive. However, let us set ourselves the goal of joining these countries:

1. US – 91.3bn tonnes
2. India – 60.6bn tonnes
3. China – 35.7bn tonnes
4. Brazil – 34.3bn tonnes
5. Germany – 31.1bn tonnes
6. Russia – 30.3bn tonnes
7. France – 23.7bn tonnes
8. New Zealand – 18.9bn tonnes
9. Turkey – 16.7bn tonnes
10. UK – 13.9bn tonnes

Personally, I would build one mega ranch each in the six largest states of Nigeria and get a dairy company to open a nearby milk processing plant. If you have one such plant in Niger, Borno, Taraba, Yobe, Kaduna and Bauchi states, with each producing say 200m tonnes of milk a year, we are nearly there.

Written by:

Ayo Akinfe, born in Salford, Manchester, is a London-based journalist who has worked as a magazine and newspaper editor for the last 20 years. Ayo attended Federal Government College Kaduna and obtained his first degree in history from the University of Ibadan.