Agric Mechanization: Nigeria’s position along the benchmark of sectoral adjustments
That Nigeria is still tottering along the lines of food insufficiency is inarguable. The profile of food inflation recently has only put unsavoury thirst in the mouth of many. In its report on inflation, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had on Tuesday (15th November 2021), disclosed that the annual food inflation rate rose for the 24th consecutive month to 20.75 per cent in October from 20.71 per cent in September, owing to further increases in the prices of basic food items. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Inflation Report for October 2021, by the Bureau stated thus, “This rise in the food index was caused by increases in prices of food products, coffee, tea and cocoa, milk, cheese and eggs, bread and cereals, vegetables and potatoes, yam and other tubers.”
While the NBS report had showed that the annual Headline Inflation rate continued on its downward trend to 15.99 per cent in October from 16.63 per cent in September, indicating a steady slow down in price increases across the Country, the heightening of food inflation has continued as the recent development revealed the food inflation rate had risen by 7.38 percentage points since May 2019 when it dropped to 13.37 per cent.
The report partly read: “The consumer price index (CPI) which measures inflation increased by 15.99 percent YoY in October 2021. This is 1.76 per cent points higher than the rate recorded in October 2020 (14.23) percent. Increases were recorded in all classifications of individual consumption according to purpose (COICOP) divisions that yielded the Headline index. On a MoM basis, the Headline index increased by 0.98 per cent in October 2021, this is 0.17 per cent points lower than the rate recorded in September 2021 (1.15) percent. The composite food index rose by 18.34 percent in October 2021 compared to 17.38 percent in October 2020.”
That agriculture is one grandeur sector upon which the Nigerian economy can be structured for diversification, has gone beyond contest. Plethora of potentials – human and natural resources – have justified the strength of possibilities lying before the Country if the potentials are productively harnessed. However, the poor productivity profile of the sector owing to the pronouncement of the traditional practice which still saturate the workings of the sector has remained too loud, overshadowing the resemblance of a mechanised and technological driven system which is the seat to propel a massive agricultural revolution to strongly diversify the economy.
The cultivation culture shrouded by the traditional patterns of practices ridden with the drudgery and the vagaries of seasonal fluctuations are deep seated gaps which are largely far from the resemblance of a reliable system driven by modern development. The unreliability of season-driven-cultivation with such traditional techniques as bush fallowing, rotational farming, grafting and agro-forestry have shown it’s limitations, as such natural preconditions as draught and flooding, among other patterns of climate change, remain factors of inconsistencies which pose strains of losses to farmers as well as limitations of determinable parameters for cultivation.
Revolutionised system of agriculture embodying the patterns of such modern technologies as the Vertical Farming, using indoor techniques and Controlled-Environment Agriculture (CEA) technology, have far gone become the way of a new civilisation in the advanced world. Hydroponics, Aeroponics, Aquaponics, and Polyhouse/Polytunnel farming are fast becoming the new civilisation the advanced world are leveraging on to out-smart the limitations of climate and the vagaries of natural conditions. Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Automation, and Robotics, are technological innovations which have been integrated into the farming system to embellish the civilisation of mechanisation in the agricultural sector.
The need for a shift from the prevailing system in Nigeria, largely saturated by manual labour with the use of local implements and working animals such as oxen, cows, horses and mules which overshadow the culture of Agricultural practice in the Country, is paramount. Moving towards the use of mechanised agriculture and the new technologies of farming techniques has become the way for Nigeria to go to have an agriculture sector that bears resemblance with new farming civilisation, which is non negotiable to structure the Nigerian economy along the virile line of a diversified architecture, strengthened with possibilities of strong revenue base and robust employment opportunities.
Recall recently that the Federal Government had in October convened a workshop to brainstorm and deliberate on the challenging issues and constraints affecting the full realisation of its commitment in achieving food sufficiency, employment generation and wealth creation through irrigated agriculture. At the heels of the event, Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu who said this in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital at the opening of the North-Central Regional Workshop on Establishment/Strengthening of Water Association for Management of Public Irrigation Schemes, was quoted: “We have also taken a giant stride towards attaining food sufficiency and security. This is achievable through irrigated agriculture by promoting all-season farming, which is also one of the primary mandates of the department of irrigation and drainage of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, in partnership with the River Basin Development Authority.
“Consequently, a wholesome change in the irrigational institution management framework as proposed by the transforming irrigation management of the Nigerian project including the reorganisation of sector water user associations and formation of water users’ groups along hydraulic structures is inevitable in order to sustain the systems of the farmers in the irrigation scheme. The training project is a World Bank-sponsored programme under the Federal Ministry of Water Resources with the principal aim of transforming irrigation management in Nigeria.
“I, therefore, want to use this medium to call on this workshop to brainstorm and deliberate on the challenging issues and constraints affecting the full realisation of the Federal Government’s commitment in achieving food sufficiency, employment generation and wealth creation through irrigated agriculture.”
The shift to large-scale commercial based agriculture defined by the integration of machines and technological innovations since the wake of the Industrial Revolution has become the way to go for macro productivity. The new civilisation has made farming more alluring with the profitability of mass productivity, quality improvement and production efficiency, while knocking off climate limitations and the phenomenon of drudgery associated with the labour-intensive traditional culture of farming. While Nigeria cannot be said not to be aware of the benefits of the new civilisation in the sector, it is inarguable the efforts of moving towards this frame of industrial orientation, are still infinitesimal compared to the desideratum. Hence, agriculture in the Country is still far closer to the lines of the traditional labour-intensive culture subjected to the vagaries of climate and seasons, than it is to the profile of the civilised culture of the industrial work of the 21st Century.
It has become non negotiable for the Government, if it so wishes to develop agriculture as a robust base for diversifying the economy, to redirect the orientation of farming in the Country by massive investments engineered by coordinated policies to give quicker resemblance to the civilisation of an industrial farming revolution driven by mechanisation and modern technologies.
As the call for a robust mechanised system of Agriculture in the Country has continued to attract reverberating connotations, it is inarguable that Nigeria is yet to get it right on the lines. The productivity of the sector, still much in view, bends towards the curve of technical insufficiency, inadequacies of man power in the new framework of the system and tardy interventions needed to move towards the desideratum. That the Government still has much role to play is an understatement. Such interventions needed to dovetail the realities of the productive capacities of the sector for mechanised reorientation, demands the coordinated efforts of all levels of government with strategic policies framed with reconcilable parameters overlaying towards the broad goal of macro-definite virility to fortify the economy in the long run.
