Infrastructural deficits impede increase in agric productivity

One of the greatest problems confronting agricultural productivity in the country is the poor state of the roads. The bad roads have multifarious effects on the private sector, economy and the citizens in general.

Developing the agriculture sector in the country entails establishing key infrastructure enablers which will help boost productivity.

According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), Nigeria’s core stock of infrastructure is estimated at only 20-25 per cent of GDP, compared with 70 per cent for other middle income countries of its size, leaving a gaping infrastructure deficit of $300bn.

This infrastructural deficit has made the nation to suffer low levels of agricultural productivity; farmers have to grow only what they can eat or the extra they can carry on their heads to nearby markets.

Many roads are totally impassable after few days of heavy rainfall cutting off some communities completely from being accessed. Even when commuters offer to pay higher fares, many commercial motorists refuse to go to such communities for fear that their vehicles would sink.

“A big challenge to agricultural productivity and food security in Nigeria is the lack of adequate infrastructure to support food production and distribution.” Titus Awokuse, Chair of the Department of Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources,

Poor drainage systems have badly affected agricultural production in the third and fourth quarter of the year, making analyst predicting a double digit inflation rate for September.

Nigerian agricultural sector productivity has been recently affected by floods. The floods have destroyed farm produce such as rice, groundnut, millet, guinea corn and maize worth up to N49 billion, according to a wire report.

Due to the nature of these crops, which do not require much water, the damage could not be corrected when the floods submerged farmlands, as most roads leading to farmlands lack drainages.

Floods have destroyed crops in Sokoto, Zamfara with an estimated 626,250 metric tons of rice lost. Also, Kebbi and Jigawa have lost a combined 635,000 hectares of land.

This is sure to affect the supply of the food commodity on both the local and international markets and given the Central Bank of Nigeria’s import ban on some agricultural products, prices are expected to increase, leading to increase in inflation rate.

Another major problem impeding agricultural growth is poor farming practices carried out by more 96 percent of farmers across the country.

According to Industry watchers, Nigeria is not currently making use of its arable land and the land it is using is not properly prepared or utilised – fertilisers, equipment and improved seedlings are not being used in sufficient quantities; as a result, yield per acre is very low.

Farmers’ inability to access vital information that is beneficial to them and the ineffective dissemination of information by extension agents cause poor feedbacks between farmers, research institutes and policy makers in the agricultural sector.

Most farmers in Nigeria still lack access to improved seed varieties and modern farming techniques as a result of the inefficiency of extension services agents that are suppose to teach farmers good farming practices.

“I still farm with the farming methods my father taught me before he died and that was roughly 50 years ago. I really want to use modern technologies but I don’t even know where to get them from and how to operate them. The extension service agent that is supposed to teach us modern technology hardly visits my farm,” Sule Usman, a Yam farmer in Wukari, Taraba State.

The low rate of Nigerian agriculture productivity is caused by many factors, including low levels of technology and land utilization.

Agriculture is very important to the economy of Nigeria, for Nigeria to be a power house in food production, it must unlock its huge amount of Agricultural potential to be a power house of food that can actually feed itself and also feed the world and earn a lot of income that can take millions of its citizens out of poverty.

 

Josephine Okojie