The average age of farmers in Nigeria is a major setback to the country’s quest for food security, as the agric sector is badly hurt by aging farmers, a development that has seen crop output decline in recent years, experts say.
The average age of the Nigerian farmer is 60 years and this implies that the sector is yet unattractive to the country’s young population.
Nigeria’s food import bill may continue to rise, on account of the failure of the productivity of aged farmers to match the needs of the country’s growing population, industry sources say.
“The average age of a farmer in Nigeria today is 60 years. For a crop that is highly labour-intensive, 60 years will not give the maximum impact in the industry,” Sayima Rima, president, Cocoa Association of Nigeria, told BusinessDay in a telephone interview.
“Tree crops, including cocoa suffer the most. We need to start making cocoa and the likes attractive to the youth, through incentives because the investment in tree crop is very high and most youths cannot afford it” Rima said.
The agricultural sector grew by 0.30 percent from 3.09 percent in Q1 2016 to 3.39 percent Q1 2017, while on a quarter-on-quarter basis, it declined by 0.65 percent from Q4 2016, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) GDP report.
Crop production, which is the main driver of growth in the sector, has been on the decline since the third quarter of 2016, dropping from a peak of 4.9 percent to 3.5 percent in first quarter 2017.
“The average age of farmers in the country is a huge threat to food security. Our agriculture is still labour intensive, so what can a 60-year old do?” asked Abiodun Olorundenro, chief executive officer, Green Vine Farms.
“This is why our crop output has remained low. The youths are the future. We must ensure we provide incentives for them to go into farming,” Olorundenro said.
According to industry players, the failure to make agriculture attractive to the younger generation would lead to food production shortfalls, as the population continues to experience remarkable growth.
“It is going to be disastrous if in the next two years, the average age of farmers is still 60 years. Our population is growing very fast and the current average age of farmers cannot feed our growing population,” said AfricaFarmer Mogaji, chief executive officer, X-ray Farms Limited.
“If we are serious to feed ourselves as a nation, we must attract the younger generation to farming. If we fail to achieve this, our food import bill will continue to rise,” Mogaji added.
Currently, the Federal Government is making efforts to make agriculture more attractive to the youth but such efforts have yielded little impact, as most youths do not want to be involved in drudgery.
“Youths will only find agriculture attractive if there is innovation and technology in the sector. Technology is very crucial if Nigeria really wants to boost agric productivity and make youths embrace agric,” said Olorundenro who was earlier quoted.
Nigeria still has deficiency in most of its crop production and is fast losing its status in key commodity crops such as cocoa, where the country, which was third global producer of the crop has dropped to seventh.
Josephine Okojie
