Federal government |
With the waning
price of oil, Nigeria's pressure to find other sources of revenue for
government spending as well as stabilising the economy from future
external shocks has been heightened.
As almost 90 per cent of government
revenue comes from oil, the former Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala aimed to structure the 2015 budget as if Nigeria was not
an oil-producing nation. In the agriculture sector, evidence of this
diversification may be seen. Food imports declined from ₦1.1 trillion
($6.7 billion) in 2009 to ₦684 billion ($4.35 billion) in 2013 and there
are recent government efforts to boost the interest in the agricultural
industry to youths and other interested parties through the launch of
the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA), a major structural reform
of the Nigerian agriculture sector. Billions of naira and millions of
dollars have been pledged to support financially small and medium scale
farmers and facilitate the access to agricultural equipment hiring
enterprises. Efforts are commendable but are they enough?
World Bank shows
that compared with its African peers, the Nigerian government's
expenditure on agriculture as a share of total government expenditure
and in proportion to agricultural GDP, are well below average. World
Bank statistics show for the period 2000-10, agricultural spending as a
share of total spending averaged only 3.8 per cent. This figure is less
than the continental average 5.4 per cent, the West African average of
7.4 per cent and it actually was woefully halved in 2014 to 1.8 per
cent. How can the ambition for a transformed agricultural sector be
achieved with such little government input?
Agriculture
contributes between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of Gross Domestic
Product. In addition, despite the fecundity of Nigeria's land, only 40
per cent of the 75 per cent arable land is cultivated. With such a gap
existing, the underutilised potential shows that there is still vastly
more to do. Ten per cent of the present population still are unable to
meet their daily calorific needs due to affordability, effective mass
food production, storage and distribution.
Nigeria tops the list of 11
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries that have
over one million people affected by hunger and under-nourishment. With
Nigeria's population projected to grow to about 259 million people by
2050, the issue with Nigeria's agricultural development is that the
sectors rate of growth and productivity, relative to other sectors of
its modernizing economy, is not accelerating quickly enough. This issue
must be solved to ensure that citizens and investors are attracted to
solving issues in this sector instead of flocking to other higher
growth/return industries.
Changing the image of agriculture
How can this be
done? Firstly, a simple way is by changing the current image and
adjectives associated with agricultural related jobs and careers from
"rural", "backward" and "peasantry" to "vibrant", "entrepreneurial" and
"creative". These are buzzwords used for other booming sectors of
Nigeria's economy so why not for agriculture? The wandering eyes of the
youth, for this the highest unemployed demographic of the Nigerian
economy, must be trained to focus on the potential that exists in the
agricultural sector. Vast opportunities exist in an integrated
agriculture value system in areas such as processing, marketing,
logistics, Information Technology, strategy, investment planning and
finance.
The private or public sectors need to be become more active
through partnerships with Information Technology sectors, creative
industries to develop marketing techniques and manufacturing sectors to
produce labour saving and processing techniques. This will ensure that
agriculture is not just seen simply as "farming" but as an aspect of the
economy that is integral to all areas of growth.
Ecologically and economically viable agricultural technology
An essential
condition for success in achieving sustained productivity growth in
agriculture in a developing country is the capacity to generate
ecologically adapted and economically viable agricultural technology.
This means ideally, technical innovations, which reduce the inherent
inflexibility of inelastic factors of production, such as land or
labour.
This may enable agricultural producers realise relatively more
profit and therefore, achieve sustainable growth. How does this
ecologically adapted viable agricultural technology occur? It happens
when farmers, being induced by the prices and costs of production,
search for technical alternatives, which save on their limited factors
of production. Farmers or "Nagropreneurs" (young Nigerian entrepreneurs
in agriculture), to use the terminology coined by the Ministry of
Agriculture, press public research institutions to develop new
technology and demand that agricultural supply firms supply reasonably
priced modern technical inputs which substitute scarce factors of
capital, land and labour.
Perceptive actors
in the economy, such as other local or international farmers,
scientists, agricultural entrepreneurs and public administrators,
respond by making available new technical possibilities and new inputs
which enable farmers to profitably substitute the increasingly abundant
factors for current scarce factors. These fresh technical possibilities
and innovative inputs are solutions, which Nigeria's Ministry of
Agriculture, should promote in addition to the amount of finance and
programmes allocated to farming. Increasingly agricultural opportunities
are seen only for farmers to solve but the ministry should call upon
engineers, scientists, marketers, supply chain experts and finance
professionals. Their actions enable the inelasticity, which exists in
the agricultural sector, to be lessened.
An example of both 'land saving' and 'labour saving' new technology is a
company that takes advantage of bringing together innovative
technology, digital media and social organisations to improve
agriculture, health and nutrition in sub-Saharan countries in Africa.
For instance, sharing farming techniques and weather updates via text
message can enable small scale farmers to share best practices reducing
the amount of loss to the farmers through inefficient farming
techniques, maximising the land mass they have in possession and expert
knowledge on particular crops. It is also pivotal as it involves digital
media, which is another flourishing part of the economy.
On a larger
scale, in academic studies, irrigation and annual average rainfall have
been shown to have a positive relationship with agricultural output.
Involving irrigation experts, domestic (or international partners)
agric-engineers and agric-logistics companies in farm and seed research,
farm planning, planting, harvesting to processing may reduce the costs
associated with the lifecycle of production and as a consequence,
increase profitability through enabling all-year-round production. Other
industrial actors may involve themselves in preparing the goods for
export, marketing, business strategy and product placement to ensure
that the final goods are appealing to foreign buyers.
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