There I have my home in America, there are farms in all directions. It is true that America is the world’s greatest country of technology, industries, hi-tech inventions, etc. But America is also the world’s greatest home of farming. The state of California alone produces and exports more food that any sovereign country besides America. So too does the state of New York. If all national barriers to food importations were cancelled by all countries, America could feed the entire world. That is the truest picture of national prosperity.
Though Nigeria is not as large as America, Nigeria can also produce most of the world’s food. And the Nigerian South-west can compare quite creditably with California or New York. It is all a matter of proper governance, proper planning, proper attention to farming and to farmers.
In particular, we in the South-west already have the tool. Education is the tool for making progress in all directions in the modern world. We have made ourselves one of the world’s most educated peoples. Education is today’s sharp tool – and we hold it in our hand.
The first step into our farming revolution should be to spread the word around – in our governments, among our leaders and politicians, in our schools, colleges and universities, in our social clubs, in all our towns and villages and farmsteads, everywhere. And the word is that we as a nation are returning very seriously to winning the gold from our soil again.
For those of us who have become used to thinking that farming is not an occupation for the educated or the rich – but an occupation fit only for the illiterate, the aged and the poor – here is some information to ponder. Successful farming is a major pillar of the economic prosperity of almost every one of the leading industrialized countries of the world – such as America, Britain, Germany and Russia. Farming is also a big pillar of the growing prosperity of rising Third-world countries like Brazil, China, Argentina, India, etc. Israel is a small desert country, a young country founded only in 1948. The Israeli leaders knew from the beginning that their country must make a success of farming if it was to succeed at all. Today, Israel is one of the leading exporters of fruits and vegetables in the world. Starting from the prosperity in farming, Israel has now become one of the leading technological and industrial countries in the world.
It is therefore almost certain that if we in Nigeria or the Nigerian South-west do not make a success of farming, we will not make a success of our general economy. In other words, if we want to conquer the poverty that is now buffeting us, the place to start is to make a success of our farming right away. It is that clear and simple. Waiting for the oil of the Niger Delta is, for more than 99% of Nigerians, particularly of the Yoruba people of the South-west, waiting for more poverty and more suffering. Waiting for our state governments to provide employment for most of us from the handouts that they get from the oil money from Abuja monthly, is inviting disaster upon ourselves and our families.
In recent years in our South-west, our governments have been paying some attention to agriculture, but, unfortunately, they have been following Nigeria’s insane practice of holding everything in the hands of governments and bureaucrats – and therefore achieving no real success. We need to learn how other Third-world countries are creating a virile class of modern farmers.
For a start, our governments must immediately begin to encourage and assist us private citizens to invest in farming. All of us belonging to the younger generations in the South-west are educated. That is an asset. Quite a good number of us who are educated have some education in some aspect of agriculture or business. That is another asset. Many of us (professionals, businessmen, political leaders and civil servants) command some financial resources or some access to finance. That is a great asset. To make immediate success with farming, our governments must immediately encourage and entice our people to divert some of these assets into farming.
Here are a few examples from some other Third-world countries. For Ivory Coast to become a very successful agricultural products exporter (exporting vegetables, pine apples and other fruits and cocoa) in the 1950s, the country’s first president, Felix Houphuet-Boigny, showed the way by going into very big farming. (I visited his extensive farms in the 1970s). Many prominent citizens followed his example, and then many common folks. The first Prime Minister of Israel, Dr. Ben Gurion, gave up political leadership and became a farmer in a settlement that was turning a desert into farms – and thus contributed much to the Israeli farming miracle. In Brazil, there are many factories processing and exporting farm products. In one such factory – an enormous tomato processing factory outside Sao Paulo – I watched farmers coming to deliver truck-loads of tomato for a whole day. It was the same in a company that I visited in the Philippines – a company exporting fresh and canned pine-apples to the United States. Argentina is a major exporter of beef because many in the Argentinian elite invest in cattle ranching.
In summary, for those of us who already command some assets, the opportunities are virtually limitless in crop farming, crop packaging, crop processing, livestock raising, meat processing, various export businesses, agricultural machinery importation, sales, rentals, and servicing, etc. Agricultural machines are the tools of modern farming. It is important to realize that, for our educated folks, the age of hoes and cutlasses has passed. Men who import agricultural machinery, and those who sell, rent out, service, and operate agricultural machinery, are the life-blood of modern farming. For our educated youths, the door is also open for inventions of various kinds of farming tools and food processing tools, as well as for various new kinds of processed foods, snacks, spices, etc, for home consumption and for export. A businessman whom I met in South Korea made his wealth through packaging and exporting South Korean native spices and herbs. In such ventures, our country is virgin land – a land in which the enterprising and sagacious can quickly amass a fortune.
The beautiful grasslands of the northern-most parts of Yorubaland must turn into cattle ranches belonging to rich Yoruba ranchers, and we must become a net exporter of meat products. We must recover our position as one of the world’s largest exporters of cocoa. We must expand cocoa acreage in our forestlands, and replace our old and tired cocoa trees with new and better quality trees. And we must re-energize our Cocoa Produce Marketing Unions.
Finally, our state governments are, of course, our frontline assets in this revolution. It is they who must chart the plans, lay out the rules, and do most of the motivating of our people. Happily, they are already awake to these tasks. In the agenda for South-western Regional Integrated Development, agriculture leads the way. The awareness already exists; all that is now needed is that they must approach it right. They must believe that we the common people can get it done.
