Nigerian smallholder farmers have continued to lag behind its peers owing to their inability to raise productivity due to the collapse of the country’s agric extension service delivery.
Despite the potential of Nigeria’s agricultural sector to diversify the economy, it is still fraught with a lot of challenges that have continued to limit the sectors growth.
One of such challenges is the collapse of agricultural extension services which has been seriously weakened by inadequate funding to support field extension services, poor roads and policy flip flop by various governments.
The inability of farmers to access vital information that is beneficial to them and inadequate dissemination of information by extension agents have reduced agricultural productivity in the country for decades.
Agric extension service is the application of scientific research and new knowledge to agricultural practices through farmers’ education. The extension agents function as the link between farmers, research institutes and the government.
‘Since I started farming more than 10 years ago, extension agents have only visited my farmland twice,’ says Samuel Sanondo, a farmer who farms 15 hectare of maize and yam in Donga local government area in Taraba State.
“I am still farm with the farming methods I learnt from my father. The extension agent that is supposed to teach me new techniques has only visited my farm once,” Sanondo says.
Sanondo’s case is similar to farmers across the country as the extension service system has been marred with a lot of challenges especially in the area of manpower.
For more than a decade, there has been no recruitment of extension agents in most state of the federation. This has reduced the number of extension agents; with many approaching retirement age.
“The issue of manpower is a very big problem. There has been no recruitment of extension agents by some states since the World Bank grant was exhausted in the 80’s,” says Mohammed Khalid Othman, assistant director, National Agricultural Extension Research Liaison Services (NAERLS). “We have a situation where some states have one agent serving 2,000 farming families.”
According to Othman, the country cannot improve farmers’ productivity when the ratio of extension agents given to farmers is as high as what we have currently in the country especially at a time were the government wants to diversify the economy through agriculture.
In trying to address the issue of limited extension agents, some states have resulted to picking cooperatives and association heads and educating them on latest technologies and information necessary for the farmers in their communities who in turn are expected to pass the information to them under their cooperatives and associations.
But it has failed to get to farmers in rural communities as most of the heads of such associations who attend such trainings on modern techniques can hardly translate to other farmers.
Abdul Sule, a tomato farmer in Alabata, Odeda, Ogun state says “any time the extension agents come, they pick selected farmers for training so that those farmers can come back and teach us what they have learnt but most of the farmers come back and are unable to explain anything to us.”
According to Antti Ritovnen, chief executive officer, Dizengoff Nigeria, has noted that lack of farmers education is the major challenge confronting Nigerian farmers, saying that farmers are yet to increase their yield per hectare because they lack the information on good farming practices.
Ritovnen called on the government to revive Nigeria’s agricultural extension service, saying it is the major way information is being disseminated to farmers mostly in the rural areas.
Research institutes in Nigeria have blamed the government for the gap that exists between the farmers, research institutes and extension service. The government needs to address the problem with the delivery of extension services in other to boost farmers’ productivity. Government has to make provision for bridging the gap between the lab and the farms, they complain.
“When we come up with new technologies which should improve farmers’ productivity, it never gets to the farmers because the extension agents fail to transfer these technologies to them. And this is the case because the extension workers are not just there. The issue is because of the failed system and the gap created by the government,” Celestine Ikuenobe, director of research, Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) said in a telephone interview with BusinessDay.
Ikuenobe says that the agents are not adequately funded and lack motivation. He stressed the need for government to address these issues of extension service delivery if the economy will be diversified through agriculture.
In view of this shortfall, experts underscore the need for private-sector participation in the funding and delivery of agricultural extension services so as to meet the needs of the farmers. They argue that agricultural extension services have been dominated by the Agricultural Development Programme in Nigeria for a long time.
The experts insist that the traditional extension services, linked with production objectives and blanket recommendations, can no longer meet farmers’ expectations.
Josephine Okojie
