Nigeria’s population is growing. Although we have not had a census in more than a decade, and a credible one even longer, we know that the population is way more than it was 20 or 30 years ago. We know this because we measure fertility and population growth reasonably well.
According to projections by the United Nations, there will be 400 million people in Nigeria by 2050. If that sounds like it is far way then think again. I still plan to be alive by then, so it is obviously not far enough.
The obvious question that should pop up when you think of a Nigeria with 400 million people is “what are all these people going to do?”, and specifically “what are all these people going to eat?”. As the former central bank governor Soludo said in his recent address at The Platform, “We need to start preparing for 400 million people that will soon be upon us in a world without oil.”
The question is particularly important when you think about the dynamics of our agriculture sector over the last two decades. Agriculture has been important to stability in Nigeria because it has historically served as a kind of social security. As our parents would say, “if all else fails you can always go back to the village and farm”. The assumption however, is that land is abundant and indeed when Nigeria had a population of 50 million people perhaps it was. With a population today of nearly 200 million it certainly is not abundant. With a population of 400 million? You know the answer.
According to statistics from the Food and Agricultural Organization, in 1981 Nigerians cultivated about 15 million hectares of land. By 2000 this had risen to about 40 million hectares. In 2018 we cultivated about 55 million hectares of land. For context, the entire Nigeria, including swamps and deserts and mountains is about 92 million hectares of which an estimated 72 million can be used for agriculture and only 37 million is actually good for it.
To cut the long story short, we are running out of land. If you worry about the validity of this data please keep in mind that it is actually very easy to measure these things using satellites now.
Indeed, a lot of the growth in agriculture over the past two decades has been driven mostly by farmers as a whole just using more land. On average we have not actually been getting better at growing most things. If you look at the value of agricultural produce per hectare, after adjusting for prices it was roughly $700 per hectare per year in 1981. In 2017 it was still roughly $700 per hectare. There was a temporary bump in between 1999 and 2007 but that appears to have only been temporary.
The major culprit here is that our farming practices or typically archaic resulting in very low yields. Tomato farmers in the Netherlands produce over 5000 percent more per hectare than Nigerian tomato farmers. No typo there. Rice farmers in China produce over 300 percent more rice per hectare than our farmers. Maize farmers in South Africa produce over 200 percent more per hectare than our maize farmers. Even for cassava, which we are the world’s largest producer, Brazilian cassava farmers have yields that are almost 300 percent higher than ours. In short, we use a lot of land for agriculture, but we are not really very good at it compared to almost everyone else.
So, what is the way forward? How do we feed 400 million people without having access to more land? Simple. We need to actually get better at agriculture and focus on increasing our yields. To do this we need farmers who are smarter and better educated.
The obvious question that should pop up when you think of a Nigeria with 400 million people is what are all these people going to do? and specifically what are all these people going to eat? We need to start preparing for 400 million people that will soon be upon us in a world without oil.
If our farmers are still farming the same way their grandparents farmed then it means we are not making progress. We need to better harness water resources. Depending on rainfall is cool but irrigation systems are better. We need better seeds and better varieties. We need better organised markets and value chains to absorb more production and minimise waste.
I could go on but will stop here. The moral of this story is that we need a new agriculture policy direction that is focused on getting better at agriculture. Else, we may have to figure out what to do with those future 400 million hungry Nigerians.
Dr. Nonso Obikili is chief economist at Business Day.
