An insight into Agricultural Transformation Agenda

Does the nation Nigeria need more players, more stakeholders in the agricultural sector? Does revitalizing the agricultural sector mean deploying youth cores to farms for their service year? How does that improve the sector, how does it increase output of agricultural produce, how does it stabilize price of farm commodities, how does it make our food store well, how does it make the farmer richer?

The agricultural sector undoubtedly holds opportunities for a better economy in Nigeria. However, a more pragmatic approach is needed in this development process. A crowded group does not connote an effective group; the nation doesn't need to encourage everyone to become farmers, it should be wary of compounding the problems in the sector by bringing greenhorns into the agricultural transformation circle like when it was proposed by some persons that youth cores should be deployed to farms for their service year.

All these being said, in my opinion of the agricultural transformation agenda I think the nation needs to look into factors that encourage maximum productivity, factors such as:
Organic Agriculture
Accessible roads to farm
Good storage facilities
Implementable agricultural policies

To improve the agricultural sector in Nigeria the country has to fully throw its weight behind  the course of growing food naturally; a practice that would strengthen the soil for future cultivation of food, maintain the ecosystem, and contribute to a much healthy society.

Due to poor roads, many farmers in the process of transporting some perishable goods to the market lose a lot of those goods to spoilage and damage because more days are spent on the road as the roads are bad, transport people also in almost all situations charge a high fee due to the bad roads; all these consequently add up to lowering the Farmer's revenue. In the view of this no matter how much we intensify food production in Nigeria there will always be problems for the farmer unless the problem of bad roads is solved.

Glut is another serious problem that would downplay the efforts of the nation towards sustainable agriculture, if unresolved, our case will simply be like that of a person who needs water direly but goes to the river and fetch into a basket. We won't make an headway.

For example, when tomatoes are in season there is an excess in the market, and owing to the fact that they are perishable farmers are forced to sell more at a cheaper price. It's either they sell or the tomatoes go to waste, but if there are functioning processing plants this wastage can be curbed and farmers can make more money from their toil.

Farmers will be encouraged to cultivate more during the raining season and reduce or eliminate the planting cost of dry season farming altogether if there was enough storage facilities that are accessible to farmers and almost everyone will benefit from this.

Lastly, the government has some more huge role to play in the agricultural development as they have to play in the above points, and this time it is in the area of making implementable policies in the agricultural sector; and this include setting price ceilings and floors for agricultural produce and checking the impact of middlemen in the agricultural value chain.

Agriculture in Nigeria is promising, if the above points are taken into account then agriculture in Nigeria has the capacity to feed local and export markets and enrich stakeholders beyond words can express.

Written by Cornelius Eniola