New Extension Policy will enhance commercial agriculture

The new Nigerian agricultural extension policy by the Federal Government ( FG) has set to promote small scale farming to commercial agriculture.

 The Executive Director ( ED) NAERLS, Prof. Emmanuel Ikani  said this at the recently concluded 2024 IAR cropping scheme when he chaired one of the technical sessions of the activities of the farming crops program of Institute for Agricultural Research ( IAR).

Prof. Ikani reacting to improved technologies transfer to farmers in Nigeria pointed that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security ( FMAFS) new extension policy program  is intended to migrate small scale farmers to commercial agriculture through best agronomics  of climate smart agriculture to ensure food security.  Added this was an era of using few numbers of people to get maximum agricutural produce for food security.

NAERLS ED said the new FMAFS harmonized extension manual is aimed to reset the small scale farming with obsolete implements mentality to technologies inclined agricultural practices towards commercial food productivity.

Ikani said " Just 1% of farmers in America feed their country while 75% in Nigeria with the use of obsolete tools cannot. There is a need in Nigeria for us to ensure simple labour saving devices to step down drudgery in farming"

He recalled that agricultural extension services were mainly the responsibility of the government in the early days with success through the multi states agricultural development program ( Adps), but pointed the same method has been argued to be weak for the  present day practices due to the huge gap between farmers and extension officers.

Already a bill is being sponsored on how funding of extension services will be well sorted at the National Assembly as stakeholders believed that approval of the bill would go a long way to advance our food productivity system with improved technologies.