Editorial- 100 Years of Agric Colleges, yet substandard produce still persist

No doubt the existence of our colleges of Agriculture in Moorplantation, Ibadan and Samaru,
Zaria actually may have called for celebration considering the numbers of their years in establishments coupled the grandaunts they have chunked out over the period.

But a further probing into the activities of the colleges would leave one in no doubt to query their existence in view of rampant produce rejection that is attributed to substandard production which one would have expected the huge numbers of alumni from these colleges to have checkmated through active participation in the farming process being people trained as middle-level agricultural experts equipped with best agronomics practices to optimally harness the profitability in the sector.

Frankly speaking, we understand the fact that the establishment of those institutes and many others are quite in good order in view of the need for expertise in the sector to do more profitable agricultural practices, but we must not be shied to tell ourselves the truth that the purpose they are meant to achieve have not been met with the present crude ways of agricultural practices in the country if actually all the products from these colleges have been really there since existence.

The wastages or losses we record annually on food production running to billions of naira is pure reflection of unprofessional agricultural practices by the people in the farming and other value chains of the sector which kept us wondering the purposes for these colleges after all these years.  

This to our mind actually calls for why these colleges need to be more repositioned to achieve generation of well-trained and educated middle manpower in the practices of agricultural production and productivity towards productive commercial agribusiness economy and ecosystem of agronomics practices with soil management and new technologies applications.

We are calling the attention of the Government at all levels on how these colleges should be exploited to capacity to enhance the productivity of the sector with full capacity of revenue generations and employment creation especially by experts on the fields that have received formal training from these institutes thereby making the transferring of new technologies to grassroots becoming much more easier with smarter youths taking over from older generation of farmers. We want to echo here that there would not be need for much population in farming sector with the experts in the sector because with their expertise knowledge they will be able to achieve so much harvest on a small piece of land than plenty people with limited knowledge occupying larger space of land for just few harvest due to poor agronomics practices or applications.

This is exactly our present predicament which Government must take seriously by using these Institutes to reposition the agricultural space into the hands of younger experts with more theories and practical knowledge in the value chains of agricultural productivity after graduation. Heeding to this call will make improved technologies transfer from many of our research Institutes much easier as they will be talking to people who understand better the language the researchers are speaking just as diversion of expertise knowledge from the institutes will be well reduced to minimum.

 Government should as matter of urgency begin to deploy strategy whereby these set of people from these colleges are fully engaged to carry out the services of extension, rather than taking those people who are doing things that are not in any way related to agriculture.