The average age of farmers in the country is a major setback to the country’s quest for food security as the agric sector is badly hurt by aging farmers which has seen crop output decline in recent years, experts say.
The average age of farmers in the sector is 60 years and this implies that the sector is yet unattractive to Nigeria’s young population.
Nigeria’s food import bill may continue to rise owing to the inability of aged farmers to increase production matching the country’s population high growth rate, 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 response to questions.
“Tree crops like cocoa suffers the most. We need to start making cocoa and the likes attractive to the youths through incentives because the investments in tree crops are very high and most youths cannot afford it” Rima said.
The agricultural sector grew by 0.17 percent from 3 percent in Q1 2018 to 3.17 percent Q1 2019, while on a quarter-on-quarter basis it increased by 0.72 percent compared to the preceding quarter, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) GDP report.
Crop production which is the main driver of growth in the sector accounts for 85 percent of agricultural GDP.
“The average age of farmers in the country is a huge threat to food security. Our agriculture is still labour intensive, so what can 60 years old do?” asked Abiodun Olorundenro, Manager, Aquashoots Limited.
“This is why our crop output has remained low. The youths are the future. We must ensure we incentives them into farming,” Olorundenro said.
According to industry players, failure to make agriculture attractive to the younger generation would be disastrous to the country as population continues to grow at a very high rate.
“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 and head, agric group, Lagos Chambers of Commerce and Industry (LCCI).
“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 youths 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 fast losing its status in key commodity crop like cocoa where the country which is second global producers of the crop has dropped to fourth.
Josephine Okojie
