The falling oil prices has reawakened the clamour for the economy’s diversification. Agriculture, experts say, can create jobs and be a major revenue earner. DANIEL ESSIET writes on what farmers and other stakeholders expect from minister Audu Ogbeh.
While the Agriculture Transformation Agenda (ATA) of the former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, set the sector on the path of transformation, experts have advised his successor, Chief Audu Ogbeh, to lift the sector higher with pragmatic development blueprint that will boost food production.
They advocated for restructuring to enable the sector become a major revenue earner and job creator.
The economy, according to them, is facing heightened risk because of macro-economic pressures, including unstable exchange rates and falling oil prices.
The government needs macro-economic policies that will not only lead to budget balance, but promote activities that show the financial sector is not under stress; and enable international credit-rating agencies to increase the nation’s rating.
Since the key driver that powered economic growth in the past was agriculture, experts say Ogbeh should establish an enabling environment to help agric industries move up the value chain.
In his paper, “Agriculture: A Panacea for youth unemployment in Nigeria”, presented at the 15th Prof. A.A. Adegbola Memorial Lecture, organised by Ikorodu Division, Human Resource Development Board (IDHRDB), in Lagos, the Vice-Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Prof Adebiyi Daramola said the minister must embrace a productivity-led agenda as job creation is the best way to eradicate poverty. He said agric is an essential partner in the fight against poverty.
According to him, increased investment in agriculture is essential for job creation, adding that the large number of unemployed youths will not only act as a brake on economic growth, but provide a breeding ground for social instability and conflict if not addressed.
Daramola noted that population explosion has contributed to youth unemployment. He said: ”Nigeria has continued to experience increasingly high rate of population growth, which has produced an overwhelming increase in young population, thereby resulting in rapid growth of labour, which is outstripping the supply of jobs.This is in contrast to many other developed countries.”
He maintained that the need for change is very desirable and necessary for the country to forge ahead and to meet up with the global challenges.
According to him, unless the youths are productively engaged in modern agriculture that generates higher incomes and creates employment, the future remains bleak.
“Increased involvement of youths in agribusiness will help reduce unemployment among the teeming Nigerian youths,” he said.
Enhanced agribusiness, according to him, will open opportunities for employment in marketing, transportation, cold storage and warehousing facilities, credit, insurance and logistics support services.
He noted, however, that youths need skills to take advantage of new opportunities, within agriculture to improve their livelihoods. According to him, there must be programmes to ensure that youths do not seek job opportunities, but are proactively motivated to explore opportunities for creating and providing solutions through finding, adding and creating values along the agric value chain.
He called for youth-focused policy interventions and reforms that will engage the private sector, providing conducive investment climate and making agriculture relevant from the perspective of enhancing the value-chain, income generation and creation of competitive employment.
As long as unemployment persists, he noted, it is unlikely that Nigeria can attain the high rates of economic growth necessary to address poverty reduction. Therefore, the government should take steps towards achieving a broad-based agric-led economic growth.
According to him, a national increase in food production will lead to food and income generation.
This entails improving productivity and increasing incomes derived from rural livelihoods and putting in place policies and institutions aimed at empowering farmers, pastoralists and fisher folks to enable them get out of the poverty trap.
For him, the government can successfully reposition agriculture, building on its many intrinsic strengths—a young labour force, abundant natural resources, to name a few, to create a second wave of growth and prosperity. There are challenges, but he believes that they can be overcome.
The Provost, Oyo State College of Agriculture, Prof Gbemiga Adewale, said there is need to adapt agricultural sector to expect climate shifts or risk a severe economic crisis in the future.
This is because of the devastating effects climate change has had on the nation’s entire agric system. Since Nigeria is large and diverse in a variety of ways, he noted that climatic patterns are becoming both less predictable and more severe.
According to him, rainfall patterns have become highly variable across the country.
The impacts of climate change, he explained, however, has pit farmers against impossible odds – particularly, geographically vulnerable areas of the country.
According to him, the nation’s agricultural production base is varied. Farmers, he said, need to know future climatic scenarios and how these will affect the agricultural sector.
He urged Chief Ogbeh to prepare and present an accurate picture of the country’s level of weather vulnerability to climate change to help operators reduce risks and exposure. He said the government policy needs to focus immediately on helping farmers adapt to climate impacts by addressing both food production and marketing efficiencies.
According to him, Nigeria needs to build on its economic progress through climate-proofing measures. The priority, he maintained, should be to help farmers adapt and assist the rural livelihood systems become more resilient.
He said the government needed to build more sustainable agriculture and food systems, that are resilient to stress and better able to cope with – and respond to – climate change impact.
The government, he said, should strengthen extension capacity to provide technical help to farmers and ensure that federal, state and local regulations support the growth of agriculture and other food businesses. In the longer term, he noted that Nigeria has a larger challenge. Since the key drivers that powered its robust growth in the past—are beginning to run out of steam. He said the nation now needs new sources of growth to replace them, which is agriculture.
With majority of farmers living in rural areas, improving their livelihoods will require the promotion of inclusive growth and making responsible investments that address their needs.
Director of Studies, Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute, (ARMTI), Ilorin, Dr Olufemi Oladunni said the previous administration has invested heavily in projects taking a value chain approach. This involved taking the market system in its totality.
While agriculture has provided an important source of income for Nigerians, he said productivity remains too low and based on subsistence production.
He stressed the need for development of high-yield crops and better irrigation, enabling market access for small-scale farmers.
Oladunni stressed that higher value chain activities implies an increased demand for products such as fertilisers, seeds, pesticides and machinery. Downstream activities, according to him, would also grow.
He said promoting more farming activities through the agric value chains would accelerate economic transformation through the gains associated with enhanced productivity and the development of new activities.
Given that agriculture creates jobs, generates income, produces food and contributes to social stability, the search for a functional national food plan is vital to the nation’s development.
Expanding the sector, he maintained, would pave the way for a future where Nigeria can feed.
Infrastructure, he added, is crucial to increasing agricultural productivity and expanding agribusiness. These include power, roads, storage and processing facilities.
In view of the nation’s young and growing population, Chief Executive, Natural Nutrient Limited, Mr Sola Adeniyi advised Chief Ogbeh to make agric very lucrative to enable young people explore jobs in the agriculture and food system. Though, there is a resurgence of interest among young farmers through success stories of young entrepreneurs like him, Adeniyi stressed that it is vital to support this growth by making agriculture work more appealing and change public perceptions so that agriculture is recognised as a vitally important career.
The youth, according to him, need to be educated and made aware of how farmers operate while the government should strengthen and maintain agricultural institutions for extension, research and innovation, credit, agro-processing and marketing in order to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of farming enterprises.
Access to affordable credit, he maintained, is another key factor in attracting the youth to farming. The young people, he added, have fewer chances of obtaining capital or credit. Access, he mentioned, is often tied to availability of collateral, which is usually land that the young people do not have.
He urged the new minister to know that it is important that appropriate affordable financial packages are put in place by the financial institutions to finance agric lending.
He said the government should use agric to create jobs, keep money in the local economy and promote community development.
He urged the minister to take the value chain approach to support economic growth of the food industry. These include activities associated with food growing and harvesting, storage and transport, processing, sale, preparation and service.
