Leading experts and professionals in agriculture have advocated an urgent reset of Nigeria’s agenda on agriculture, as a way of averting a looming food crisis in the country.
The experts, who spoke ahead of a forthcoming workshop and roundtable on modern agriculture and food production in Nigeria, identified absence of strategic synergy between agriculture policies and implementation, slow adoption of technology, post-harvest challenges, low funding of research and a weak political will for sustained reforms in food production, as some of the critical areas that need to be addressed.
According to the founder of Aquatic Hub Afrique Network, Steve Okeleji, there is a disconnect between agriculture policies and implementation.
He called for a heightened level of transparency and accountability across the agric sector, with a view to ensuring that farmers are not frustrated by what may be perceived as ‘paper interventions’ that only benefit a select few and exclude great numbers of qualified and deserving practitioners.
Professor Omolayo Ariyo of the Federal University of Agriculture (FUNAAB), Abeokuta, remarked that a nation without food security cannot be said to be truly independent.
He advised the government to direct its resources and energy to tackling the challenges of post-harvest storage and processing, as a substantial part what is produced, every season, is lost to storage and post-harvest processing challenges.
Dr Peter Kolawole of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, said that Nigeria would not be able to achieve its potentials in food production, if it fails to embrace and integrate proper technology in the practice of agriculture.
He noted that most of Nigeria’s agricultural practices were still based on tedious and manual processes of the past, that could not deliver the objectives of self-sufficiency in food production.
Okeleji, who reiterated the need for sustainable reforms in food production, made reference to the country’s strides in rice production.
“Many people never believed it was possible for Nigeria to produce enough rice to satisfy local demands. If the rice revolution can be sustained, it is a matter of time before Nigeria moves higher, from its present position as the fourth largest producer of rice in the world”, he said.
The experts all agreed that the forthcoming “Modern Agriculture and Food Production Workshop and Roundtable,” organised by AVAS Consulting and scheduled for December 1 to 3, 2022 in Lagos, would be a veritable platform for cross fertilization of ideas on capacity enhancement, modern and technology-driven agricultural systems and processes, as well as policy formulation and implementation that would deliver maximal outputs for practitioners, policy makers and other stakeholders in Nigeria’s agriculture sector.
