Fostering The Interest Of Nigerian Youths In Agriculture.

By Chinwe Onuigbo, Awka

The World Food Day is celebrated on October 16 every year. It is an opportunity to use the day to once more draw attention of youths to agricultural business.

Over the years, work on the agricultural sector has been left in the hands of old people in the villages that operate with local farm implements.

The use of human muscle as labour input and local implements like hoes and machetes alone in farming cannot produce enough food for the nations teeming population.

There is the need for massive adoption of improved farming technologies by all categories of farmers. At the moment, the vast majority of the nation’s youths loathe to take up farming as a profession.

There is the compelling need to make agriculture more lucrative, interesting and attractive to them.

Some farmers today are better off as there are many billionaire farmers. In the 1980s during the launch of the Green Revolution, the then President of Nigeria, Alhaji Shehu Shagari began the programme by tilling the ground at the then State House, Ribadu Road, Lagos.

The 39th President of United States of America, Jimmy Carter is a peanut farmer from Georgia. Farming must not be regarded as a poor-man’s job. Farming must be seen as a big business that should be given highest recognition in the society.

Adequate provision of insecticides for pests control and herbicides for weeding at highly subsidized rates would help to reduce drudgery in the farm operations. Simple and modified spraying machines like knap-sack sprayers and hand-sprayers should be supplied at subsidized rates and in sufficient quantity to reach the vast majority of the farmers in their localities.

In big commercial farms, the spraying of insecticides or herbicides is often done with the help of big spray-boom attached to the tractors. In some big farms, they use helicopters because large area of land must be covered. These are innovations or modern technologies in farming today.

Making Agricultural Science a compulsory subject in primary and post-primary schools up to Senior Secondary School,SS3 would help to encourage the nation’s youths to develop interest and acquire necessary skills in agriculture.

For this to be more successful, the governments(state and federal),should ensure the provision of enough teaching aids, facilities and implements in all the schools with enough teachers who specialize in Agricultural Science.

The Government should provide adequate funds and other incentives to support Agricultural Research and Extension. Regular training is required for all personnel involved in the process including teachers in Agricultural Science courses at all levels.

Complete mechanization of agriculture also has a great role to play in encouraging the youth to get involved. There is a compelling need to subsidize modern farm machinery like tractors, harvesters, spraying machines, seed planters, water-pumps so that they are affordable to all categories of farmers.

The use of farm machinery would make farming easier, save time and human energy and increase to a large extent productivity per man per acreage of farmland.

Credit facilities should be made more readily available to farmers to enable them procure those farm inputs and machinery.

Leaders must realize that it was the rural or village small- scale farmers who fed, “clothed” and housed Nigerians during the Agricultural boom of 1960s when Agriculture was the major foreign exchange earner and the backbone of Nigeria’s economy.

With adequate support from all tiers of Governmentt, agriculture can regain its pride of glory in Nigeria.