• Thursday, March 28, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Policy summersault, others limit Nigeria’s agricultural extension services- minister

FG begins agric mechanisation Q1 2022 – Minister

The Federal Government on Monday bemoaned the decline in Nigeria’s agricultural extension services, attributing it to poor funding, policy summersault, reduction in manpower, and the lack of interest in agripreneurship by young Nigerians

Muhammad Nanono, minister of agriculture, stated this in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital, during a training session for agro extension agents in the state.

Nanono, represented by Chima Okoro, programme manager, Ebonyi State Agricultural Development Programme (EBADEP), regretted that the decline has affected food production which, according to him, exposes the country to the dangers of unemployment, youth restiveness, and economic instability.

The minister noted that agricultural extension delivery was the driver of all agricultural policies and researches, without which all efforts in the agricultural ecosystem may not realise its goals.

Frank Kudla, director, federal department of agricultural extension under the ministry of agriculture and rural development, identified factors causing a decline in the national agricultural extension delivery system to include decreasing number of extension agents occasioned by retirements, deaths, youth unwillingness to embrace agricultural entrepreneurship, poor capacity of existing extension agents to deliver, and poor funding of the sub-sector.

“This training of the agricultural extension agents, among other interventions, will serve as a floodgate for many opportunities such as providing them with tools that will help them to give, not only agronomic but also more practical services to farmers that will engender efficiency and more income”, he said.