For Africa and Nigeria in particular there is the looming threat of food insecurity. Arable lands are dwindling, climate change is taking a toll on agricultural practices,the farming population is aging and going extinct, famine is ravaging the Horn of Africa. This should be of urgent concern to all stakeholders and getting young persons to invest in or practice agriculture is a way of translating the threats to opportunities.
Agriculture is not exactly attractive. Drudgery occasioned by crude methods, low profitability of agricultural products, difficulty in accessing agro-markets among others are factors conspiring to discourage young people from Agriculture. Besides among young people including me, there is the wide-spreading mentality of “making it big” and practicing agriculture rarely guarantees that…only with telescopic sights could one see the money-spinning potential. In spite of these glaring challenges, I think young persons can still be steered to develop interest in agriculture. One effective means of doing that is making the subject Agricultural Science as practical as possible in secondary schools.
In secondary schools all over Nigeria students offer Agricultural Science for six years as part of the curriculum but much of this is geared towards theory – memorizing the concepts and duplicating them in exams. This in my opinion barely encourages the practice of the subject. I recall in my first year in high school as part of our Agricultural Science activities we were divided into groups and asked to provide seeds, plant them on allotted pieces of land, weed the farm and even do the harvesting of our plants for our consumption. So we had a small school farm for the class and my group planted groundnuts. Although at that age I was already a practicing farmer those practical sessions further cemented my interest in agriculture. That farm for me was like a personal investment – one to be treated with utmost diligence. Participating in those agricultural activities were simply exciting to most of the students in my group. Off the record though, when it came to the harvesting we were not invited, I guess the Agricultural Science teacher and his family did that at night. Even though I felt gypped of the expected harvest, the experience was still an empowering one.
Only recently during my youth service some students came to the staff room with various vegetables. So much so that you would think the Agricultural Science teacher had taken to petty trading of the leaves. The vegetables were from the class farm, cultivated by students. Well, this particular teacher was not like mine, she merely took a fraction and let whoever wanted to share in the harvest take a share, including the students. I thought that was a nice approach to learn Agricultural Science – practice the parts that are feasible rather than merely feed students with notes upon notes.
Students who participated in nurturing the class farm above are bound to appreciate the subject more and even become stakeholders in agriculture whether they decide to study agriculture as a discipline or not. Letting them partake in the “fruits of their labor” is also a means to encourage students to grow into practicing agriculturalists.
Many Nigerian schools can inculcate the approach of building a school farm, no matter how small, a nursery even. Let students practice the concepts of harrowing, ploughing, tilling, planting, weeding, manure production and application, harvesting and most importantly “reaping the fruits of their labor”. Some schools can as well afford to have a small poultry farm and have student groups take turns to tend to the birds. The cost of such a class project can easily be shared by the students in a particular group.
There is no doubt that farming is not exactly that “sexy” job most young people want to practice. And most people will only read agriculture when they have been denied Veterinary Medicine or some other “sexy” course choice. But in truth, we really don’t have to read Animal Production or Crop Production to engage in agriculture. Sometimes all we need is to see the opportunities and the needs and invest our resources in the field. For Africa and Nigeria the food insecurity threat is just enough incentive to seize the opportunities of a largely untapped sector. Making Agricultural Science truly engaging in a practical way at the secondary school level is an effective way of catching the needed farmers young.
david agogo
Feb 26, 2012 @ 02:07:46
Nice post, Rutherford.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been taking a course on sustainable business that highlights some issues in worls food production. By the way of contributing, there are some challenges that will continue inhibiting youth participation in agriculture.
1. Attitudes to physical labor: the Nigerian society is witnessing a generational shift in attitudes that views physical labour as demeaning. The white collar craze has been accelerated by the prevalence of ‘biro criminals’ in the public service, holding an irresistible pull to young people who have any form of education – thus a shot at such opportunities.
2. Problem of scale: it is difficult to encourage anyone to go into farming on the scale of subsistence – unless they have no viable economic alternative. The prospects of purchasing products other than food items is a stronger motivation for young people, especially those without the responsibilities of a family or relatives to feed.
3. Land ownership: the most significant investment for agriculture
david agogo
Feb 26, 2012 @ 02:08:52
Comment truncated… typing from a cheap tablet – not panadol. More on this later.
Itodo Samuel
Feb 26, 2012 @ 23:48:02
Valuable comments Dave. Thanks. And so true too. I am particularly worried about that issue on scale. Really no youth today would want to practice ‘backyard garden’ agriculture. For agriculture to meet with the ‘profitability urge’ it needs to be on a scale far beyond subsistence. This is a major challenge for young people who do not even have access to land yet, not to say the least the resources necessary for mechanized and large scale farming.
However, for a young person to even confront the posed challenges, they need to first of all have an interest in agriculture. You cannot see beyond the challenges without an established interest in practicing agriculture. For instance I hear Taraba and some other Northern state have some initiatives, the government offering land to wannabe large scale farmers to tap into the agro-potential. Also the Federal Government has a special fund for youths who want to practice agriculture to tap into, a fund that I was reliably informed remains unused because no youth is coming forward.
Now given these two opportunities for instance, the initiative from states like Taraba and the youth agro-fund, young people who have a genuine interest in agriculture, who have the ability to see beyond the obvious challenges can now explore these. The next challenge becomes information. How do people know of these initiatives and the requirements to tap into them. I hope to do a bit more of findings in this light and x-ray the results in subsequent posts.
Keep me in the loop, about what your learn in your course you know…I aint asking for free!
Dorky
Feb 28, 2012 @ 13:25:51
This is one of the strategies of improving school farm.”let student take part in the fruit of their labour”
Nawsheen
Mar 01, 2012 @ 19:51:46
I really like this post Samuel.. In fact myself and 5 youth consultants (from Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) are conducting a case-study on current and emerging youth policies and initiatives with special focus and links to Agriculture, which is a project by FANRPAN and supported by CTA. There was a review of each case-study this week in Tanzania and I should add that these challenges that you have described are a lot like those we have discussed in our case studies (food insecurity, unattractiveness of agriculture, new technologies instead of subsistence farming, agriculture in education, initiatives and incentives provided to youths in agriculture etc.). Since the case-studies are in progress, I cannot reveal much about the content, but my point is that there are many points which are similar to the Nigerian case (including ours) and we really hope that this study will contribute in making a change in terms of policies in agriculture and the opportunities that exist for youths in this sector. We will be organising some discussion forums on this topic soon and I’ll share the links with you. Kudos for this work, I love it 🙂
Itodo Samuel
Mar 02, 2012 @ 00:15:12
Thanks Nawsheen! You know you inspire me, you are just everywhere. I would be glad to get the gist to your findings on the case studies plus the link to that forum too. Keep the good work up dear.
Nawsheen
Mar 02, 2012 @ 09:28:07
I’ll surely share the links to the discussions with you. The case study results will be made public during the FANRPAN Regional Dialogue in September 2012.
IYEOMOAN EMMANUEL EHIZOGIE
Mar 15, 2012 @ 13:28:40
All these stuffs are a great vision but my concern is the huge amount of funds that may be needed to embark on such a great dream…. Come to think of the state of the Nigerian Human capacity… We lack the expertise and the manpower to embark on technologically needy fields of agriculture.. That’s the reason why crude tools are still in vogue… if we would be support by well meaning Nigerians and the government and also indigenes in diaspora, this dream of making nigeria a diversified economy would be tenable… Thanks for your blogs and contrbutions to hte Nigerian society… Emmanuel from UNIBEN….
oni olusola
Jun 15, 2012 @ 16:43:42
I just stumbled on this blog while searching for reason(s) why I need to focus on making a fortune out of SustainableAgriculture. I must commend your effort at ensuring that children and youths develop interest in agriculture and start to shift their focus from the white-collar jobs that promises salary which is just a form of slavery. There will always be need for the 150million Nigerians to eat and drink. Who ever meets this needs is wise. Zartech, Olam, ObasanjoFarms, Nyako Farms to mention just a few are all getting huge ROI just because they have invested in one form of agriculture or the other. What is the National plan on development, each and every dispensation comes up with personal plans/agenda aimed at achieving specific aims and objectives but have these plans helped us achieve National Growth and development? Our day breaks when we wake up. When we wake up to the opportunities that abound in SustainableAgriculture, the bankers, engineers, musician, doctors, geologist, illiterates, rich, poor e.t.c all need food, he who invests now to meet their needs is wise IMHO. God bless everyone working tirelessly to ensure that Agriculture takes it place. Like the NationalAssociationOfAgriculturalStudents (NAAS) Nigeria slogan states – ” if agriculture is stagnant, industry won’t grow”. Let’s grow our industry by taking the steps to ensuring that Nigeria and other African countries grow from where we are and be great too.
Itodo Samuel
Jun 19, 2012 @ 18:32:57
Thanks Oni, you are simply spot on. I am an engineering graduate but I am investing massively in agriculture cos the potential for wealth creation are simply too much to be overlooked. We currently have an organization for people interested in agriculture, most of them are graduates of agricultural disciplines. The movement started on Facebook and we are currently about 1500 across several states in Nigeria. We are having a revolution – young people going back to agriculture. The organization is Youth Initiative for Sustainable Agriculture (YISA). Link up with us on Facebook. We are presently working with the Minister of Agriculture and a whole lot of initiatives are in place to put agriculture in Nigeria in its right place. You can send me an email if you are interested: rutherford2forlife@yahoo.com
oni olusola
Jun 19, 2012 @ 19:13:14
I’m so impressed with the YISA project. More power to your elbow.
Femi adigz
Feb 28, 2014 @ 11:50:12
I agree with you. Even has the Federal goveremt has intensified its effort in developing the agricultural sector, it is still failing. I will only mention one area; it’s inability to identify and locate established fledgling and young farmers.
There are many young farmers who have poured their hard earned money into agricultural practices. Many have even been registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission. The question is, why have they not been approached by the government? If this country is serious about job creation and agriculture vizavis development, concrete identification of the playmakers is pertinent for its resurrection. With this identification, meaningful help should follow. You will agree with me that it is far better to sustain those who have helped and encouraged themselves than those who you cajole into starting a venture which is not of their intent will.
The government should pay marginal attention to luring and recruiting young people to farm against those who have already started farming out of their own accord. These willfull farmers should
Be given incentives and avenues to operate on larger scales. That is how you encourage farming.