1 min
In this week's Letter to My Farmers, Babatunde stresses the importance of placing sustainability itself as a key factor in developing social and economic infrastructure if we are to see any growth in the agricultural sector.
In my last few posts, I have emphasized the importance of increasing productivity as a result of increasing population. Sadly, increasing production comes with its requirements, and one of these is the development of strong infrastructure to support the growth of the agricultural sector in order to increase productivity. Currently, we have a weak infrastructure that is not suitable for the required capacity that we aim at based on the population growth further leading to poor productivity and over reliance on importation.
Besides, infrastructure can be categorized into social and economic infrastructure, which are interdependent. For social infrastructure for instance, accessing quality education that would have improved the knowledge of farmers is difficult, even the agricultural extension system in most developing countries has been non-existent. More and more social infrastructure that has not been developed is affecting human capacity development (poor welfare of the economy and negatively affecting standard of living). On the other hand, economic infrastructure has poorly been developed and maintained over the years such as power generation, mechanization, road, telecommunications amongst others. Sadly, there is too much pressure on our economic infrastructure largely due to population explosion, and it is difficult to reduce it as it seems there is little or no political will to improve these infrastructures. These are major issues in achieving food security in our present day, and we need a feasible master plan, adequate resources and strong political will to develop both the social and economic infrastructure impending the growth of the agricultural sector in most developing countries, such as Nigeria.
In conclusion, sustainable development is hinged on a holistic approach, considering the needs of all components and fixing them up accordingly. Therefore, achieving sustainable agriculture should be one of the key components, and infrastructure (social and economic) development will be the game-changer in achieving food security. Therefore, all key stakeholders should brace up and consciously support and promote the development of strong infrastructures that will support the trend of our growth.
Yours-in-Service,
Babatunde
Besides, infrastructure can be categorized into social and economic infrastructure, which are interdependent. For social infrastructure for instance, accessing quality education that would have improved the knowledge of farmers is difficult, even the agricultural extension system in most developing countries has been non-existent. More and more social infrastructure that has not been developed is affecting human capacity development (poor welfare of the economy and negatively affecting standard of living). On the other hand, economic infrastructure has poorly been developed and maintained over the years such as power generation, mechanization, road, telecommunications amongst others. Sadly, there is too much pressure on our economic infrastructure largely due to population explosion, and it is difficult to reduce it as it seems there is little or no political will to improve these infrastructures. These are major issues in achieving food security in our present day, and we need a feasible master plan, adequate resources and strong political will to develop both the social and economic infrastructure impending the growth of the agricultural sector in most developing countries, such as Nigeria.
In conclusion, sustainable development is hinged on a holistic approach, considering the needs of all components and fixing them up accordingly. Therefore, achieving sustainable agriculture should be one of the key components, and infrastructure (social and economic) development will be the game-changer in achieving food security. Therefore, all key stakeholders should brace up and consciously support and promote the development of strong infrastructures that will support the trend of our growth.
Yours-in-Service,
Babatunde
Dear Babatunde, I fully agree, infrastructure development is a key condition for agricultural development. In a paper written with Kofi Debrah, it has been shown that Africa’s agricultural development could lag behind by low population pressure related to limited road and transport development (Breman, H. & S.K. Debrah, 2003. Improving African food security. SAIS Review vol. XXIII. (Winter-Spring) no. 1, 153 – 170.). What makes me curious is why Nigeria has a relatively good development of roads and transport, while agricultural development barely has started: a) the national average cereal yield is only 1.5 t/ha, against 4 t/ha as world average; b) the use of fertilizers is neglectable while the global average is 140 kg/ha; and c) the average annual increase of the cereal yield is in the order of 15 kg/ha, against at least 75 kg/ha for countries where farmers adopted the green revolution technologies. These are figures out of my book published in 2019, with 2014 as the most recent data (From fed by the world to food security. Accelerating agricultural development in Africa. Breman & Schut, 2019. Wageningen University and Research).
You know that we compare in your book 48 of the African countries. The Nigerian transport logistic index is with 2.81 one of the highest from Africa. Only 3 of the countries have higher values. Your country has several other figures being in principle favorable for agricultural development. The Asian green revolution took of at an average availability of arable land of about 0.25 ha/person. In Nigeria it is already only 0.16 ha/person. In almost 20 African countries where the availability of arable land per person is below 0.25 ha, the development rate of agriculture is faster than in your country. Beside, the food security index of Nigeria appears being only 36, while the gross national income (GNI) per inhabitant is with 5.6 x 103 US-dollar relatively high. I identified at least 8 countries with a lower GNI per inhabitant but with a higher food security index. My question, what is the matter with Nigeria; why policy makers are neglecting crop growth intensification as technology for agricultural development? Don’t your policy makers realize that agricultural development is a “conditio sine qua non” for socio-economic development?