The Need To Move From Primary Production To Agro-Processing

Experts have said it times without number that agriculture has the potential to create jobs to reduce the high unem­ployment rate in the country, guarantee food security for our teeming population, and promote exports to earn for­eign exchange for the country.

They also advise that entre­preneurship in agriculture is all we need to turnaround Ni­geria’s economy and put it on the path of growth.

However, the question is, “How can these be achieved when the smallholder farmers who hold the forte on subsis­tence level in rural areas are handicapped, not only by use of crude implements such as hoes and cutlasses but also be­deviled by lack of basic infra­structure such as good roads, electricity, potable water, and hospitals to take care of their health needs.

The truth is that with those crude implements agriculture cannot keep pace with the high demand for food occasioned by Nigeria’s rapid population growth, or provide jobs for the teeming graduates being churned out from higher insti­tutions of learning every year.

Today, a bag of rice is go­ing for between N76,000 and N86,0000, beyond the reach of the average Nigerian. Other food items are very expensive as well.

The result is that there is hunger in the land. We can­not even produce the basic food items we eat because the farmers have been locked up in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps scattered all over the place courtesy of herds­men, bandits, and kidnappers.

The government should de­clare a state of emergency in food production by encourag­ing farmers to return to the farms and focusing on massive investment in modern technol­ogy.

This will again encourage farmers and investors to move from primary production to agro-processing, and subsi­dizing the prices for farmers.

The government can also grant import duties waivers to importers in order to bring down the prices of processing machinery and equipment. Since there is no way the smallholder farmers who do not have the needed funds to purchase machinery to go into commercial agriculture, the Federal Government should leave rhetoric and embark on massive investment in agri­cultural technology and oth­er incentives such as access to needed funds to drive in­creased food production and make it attractive to the youths and graduates.

For instance, governments should procure expensive ma­chinery and equipment such as tractors, and harvesters, and hire them out to real farm­ers, not politicians, at highly subsidised rates.

Again since the land tenure system in many states does not allow the deployment of technology for commercial ag­riculture, state governments should consider acquiring land for crop farmers to enable them to embark on large-scale farming where tractors and other heavy equipment can be deployed for massive food production.

Some state governments are doing a lot in this regard but more should cue into it to avert hunger, disease, and the atten­dant socio-economic problems.

More states should invest in those technologies and other inputs that poor farmers can­not afford and rent them out to farmers at an affordable rate.

The state governments and private investors should step up the intervention by invest­ing in the mass production of agro-processing equipment so that processors would take advantage of the resultant post-harvest surplus that would have spoilt to add value to them and make money.

In that wise, we need low-cost palm oil refineries, palm kernel shellers, melon shell­ers, garri and yam processing equipment, cassava chips ma­chines, dryers, mango, orange, cashew juice processing equip­ment and many more.

All stakeholders should con­sider how to make farming less drudgery and more attractive to the younger ones.

Take for instance, Udaya Sabar of Godiabandh village in Padmapur block of Rayaga­da district thought of how to make harvesting of coconuts less risky and tedious. They came up with a tree climbing machine that removes the dan­ger inherent in climbing coco­nut trees with bare hands.

All stakeholders must put on their thinking caps and be involved in the onerous task of changing our subsistence farming to commercial agri­culture hence the need to de­ploy technology.

Again, government would do everything within its pow­ers to find solution to the pe­rennial electricity logjam.

This is the only way the economy can become vibrant again to create jobs for the youths and graduates alike.

When this is done, govern­ments can then go ahead to create agro-processing zones where agropreneurs would converge and take advantage of localisation of mini-industries.

Let our governments begin to campaign for our youths and graduates of higher in­stitutions to embrace entre­preneurship in agriculture to take advantage of our natural endowments such as large un­cultivated arable land, good weather, good rainfall, and soil fertility.

To unlock the full potential of agriculture to diversify the economy, the government should create an enabling en­vironment, enact relevant pol­icies and laws and give incen­tives to farmers.

Through entrepreneur­ship training, develop and transform agriculture value chains to provide new income opportunities and add value to all commodities through agro-processing.

It is only when these steps are taken, that we can begin to talk about agriculture creating jobs or diversifying the econo­my through agriculture. This is the era of intelligent farm­ing and we all must embrace it. To do nothing is to exacerbate already bad situation.