“The gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought to have and that is a moral problem, not an economic one”.
_Paul Heyne
By Isah Aliyu Chiroma
Dear reader, let’s begin this week’s dialogue with something I grew up to know, and what I have been trained academically, as an ambassador from the war collage. The name, War collage might sound strange to some, but that is what we call our faculty, across the nation, as we strive to feed the nation.
The Green Revolution in Nigeria represents a pivotal period in the country’s agricultural history, this has been marked by increase food production, improve farming techniques, and enhance food security. While the Green Revolution in the past brought about notable advancements and successes, it also faced challenges and criticisms, highlighting the complexities of agricultural development in a diverse and rapidly changing environment.
From the current situation, there have been shortages of food for local consumption, resulting in the subsequent high cost of food items. In 1975 when late General Murtala Muhammad came to office, he embarks on some large-scale importation of food items to meet the immediate demands; he also imposed other restrictions, such as price control, to check the increasing cost of living. These measures had immediate and positive results and made food items available at reasonable prices. But there were all stop-gap measures. To fight inflation, there is a need to embark on long term measures.
On April 14, 1980, the government lunched the green revolution programme. This five-pronged programme aim to improved and modernized small-scale farming by individuals, large scale agriculture by co-operatives, private companies and individuals; intensive and mechanized large-scale agriculture by government intervention; methodical food conservation and distribution; and, systematic and rural development.
There have been challenges in achieving this. Nonetheless, the programme yielded very encouraging results. Then On Monday, President Bola Tinubu flagged off the Food Security and Agricultural Mechanization Programme in Niger State. This is in line with the deployment of cutting-edge agricultural machinery and technology for large-scale agro-value chain development in the state. If Niger state is able to utilize this opportunity, which we believe it would, they will be enough production to curb hunger in the country. This will provide sustainable food for consumption and create a market for farmers to sell their produce.
In more recent years, Nigeria has witnessed a resurgence of interest in agricultural transformation and food security. Initiatives such as the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) and the Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP, also known as the Green Alternative) have aimed to revitalize the agricultural sector.
These modern agricultural programs focus on increasing productivity, promoting value chains, enhancing market access for farmers, and attracting private sector investments in agriculture.
Overall, Green Revolution programs in Nigeria reflects a journey of experimentation, policy adjustments, and ongoing efforts to modernize the agricultural sector, improve food production, and enhance livelihoods for farmers across the country.
Then on this stride, the Vice President Kashim Shettima, Launches Empowerment Scheme in line with President Tinubu’s Agric Revolution. Farmers get tractors, fertilizers, seeds, other inputs for this year’s farming season.
Then, the Central Bank of Nigeria followed suit, allocating 2.15 million bags of fertilizer worth 100 billion naira to the Ministry of Agriculture for onward distribution to farmers in line with President Bola Tinubu’s directive to release 225,000 metric tons of fertilizer to farmers.
On Tuesday this week, one of my mentors invited me to X (formerly twitter) space hosted by Naira metrics to speak. The topic of our discussion was, “Agricultural Revolution, The key to tackling food price inflation”. My submission was simple; the government cannot regulate food prices without putting some important elements on ground. If we are speaking of Agricultural revolution, then what must come to our minds is mechanized farming.
The government on her own side must provide secured environment for farming, stable electricity in our industries for processing, make fertilizers, improved varieties to farmers easily accessible. The government has taken some steps, but one major issue here is, will the farmers have access to those initiatives of the federal government? When I say access, I mean can our farmers secure those fertilizes at the subsidized rate given by the Federal government?
A friend would always say, ideas are easy, execution is everything. Our system is still finding it difficult to implement some of those projects, which the targeted audience will benefit directly from it. Then, what is the way forward?
On the journey of Agricultural revolution in a country like Nigeria, implementing some of the initiatives needs to be track down, to make sure those who will benefit from it are those designed to have access to it.
Agriculture has been the key to unlock poverty, have access to sustainable food, achieve zero hunger and makes people lives better. For the common man, if he can afford a good three square meal, then other needs are just luxury. The government needs to work hard for fast action, to tackle hunger, as you cannot get much from a man that is hungry.
If we can produce enough food for our consumption, then we can also play a pivotal role in the global market, where we will come back with full force and trade our products. At the long run, we will not only produce food, we will also produce raw materials for other purposes.
Then, we need to put our farmers on site, track down their production and pay more attention to our research centers to produce improved varieties, as we continue to produce more food that will sustain the country.