Poverty’s most potent sign is food insecurity and malnutrition. The popular adage-give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime is no less true in Nigeria. Though agriculture employs 70 percent of Nigerians, poverty is pervasive. More than half the population lives on less than US$1 per day.
Socio-economically, Nigeria is agrarian, informal and rural. Most of the farming is done by poor rural dwellers and probably far removed from the reach of monetary and fiscal policies. Nonetheless, agriculture’s potential – once the economy’s mainstay remains grossly underdeveloped.
Small-scale farmers populate the sector. They are fragmented and resource-poor – ie, without access to credit, storage, and infrastructure. And yet they provide most of the food consumed in the country. Chances of increased productivity are slim; held down by factors beyond the farmers. The sector labour is intensive but without skilled manpower; most of the young and able have migrated to urban areas.
For those attracted to farming, the present land tenure system is a barrier to entry. It hinders land acquisition and its use as collateral for capital. Meanwhile to increase productivity the norm is to cultivate additional land. Thus the Land Use Act also, as it is, hampers the productivity of current farmers. Other than seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, adequate farm extension support helps. Small-scale farmers, likely to appreciate such services cannot take advantage of such service. Where available, it comes at a cost. Without such support, yield per hectare of land is further constrained.
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In addition, inconsistent policies, poor infrastructure eg, roads, electricity, storage, irrigation etc, hike up the cost of production. In return, farmers do not produce enough to meet demand; fuelling high food prices. A vicious cycle: Costly inputs, low productivity and high prices, ensues. The alternative: Consumption of imported finished goods. These are cheaper and never in short supply, neither alleviating poverty nor ensuring Nigeria’s food security.
Food insecurity is not the only effect of the current structure of agriculture in Nigeria. It’s contributing to Nigeria’s de-industrialisation. A vibrant agriculture sector provides raw materials for industries. A buoyant manufacturing sector in turn provides jobs which pull more people from the dollar-a-day trap. A trap that can be best avoided, if linkages between agriculture and industrialisation are promoted. This prevents farmers from commodity price shocks. More importantly, it ensures that even if crude oil’s appeal returns, the manufacturing sector keeps humming.
Promotion of large-scale farming provides a myriad of good: food, jobs, raw materials and rural development. Development of rural areas has the twin effects of curbing migration and protecting the most vulnerable among them from oil shocks. Rural dwellers’ dependence on fossil fuels as a source of energy means that their already meagre income takes a further squeeze when fuel is scarce. Besides rural development, projects relying on volatile oil income will suffer during periods of low oil prices.
Thus seeking food security and alleviation of poverty by supporting agriculture provides a veritable shock absorber’. Though support for agriculture is more than seeds, proper land titling and acquisition ie, conversion of land from dead to live capital, will widen access to credit of present farmers and attract other potential farmers.
Though poverty may not be made history, tackling it through food security remains a huge untapped avenue. Reviving the sector and the interrelatedness of other reforms should not be lost on the executive and legislative arms of government. Boosting agriculture goes beyond increasing non-oil income revenue for statutory allocation.
