Efficient agric extension services will aid food security

Successive governments in Nigeria have put in place several policies designed to boost farmers’ productivity and ensure food security. However, a fundamental gap between these policies and their implementation continues to frustrate their success. This gap affects many areas of agricultural life, including access to information, credit, markets, land and security.

There is the absence of functional and responsive agricultural extension services. Agricultural extension service is the delivery of information on new scientific research and knowledge by extension agents through farmer education. It is also the link between farmers, research institutes and the government.

Extension services delivery is very important for Nigeria’s agricultural development, especially as the country seeks new revenue sources. For agriculture to become an income-generating commercial activity and not just a development programme, experts say, extension services to farmers must be restructured to be efficient and effective.

More than 80 percent of Nigeria’s food is produced by rural farmers comprised of 60-70 percent women. These farmers work on small plots of land and rely on rainfall for irrigation. If adequately empowered with vital information by extension agents, the farmers have the capacity to feed the nation and help in achieving Nigeria’s dream of self-sufficiency in food and livestock production.

Over the years, however, farmers’ inability to access vital information that is beneficial to them has limited agricultural productivity, thereby threatening the country’s food security. The result of a study conducted by Lucia Omobolanle Ogunsunmi, principal research fellow, Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Obafemi Awolowo University, shows that 74.4 percent of the farmers surveyed had no contact with extension services for three years, only 4.8 percent were visited within a year, while only 27.4 percent were visited or had contact with extension services for 1-4 times a year.

There is a wide extension agent/farm ratio in the country, where it is estimated that there is one extension agent to 2,500-10,000 farming families depending on the state, according to stakeholders.

This is why experts underscore the need for private-sector participation in the funding and delivery of agricultural extension services so as to meet the needs of the farmers. Agricultural extension services have been dominated by the Agricultural Development Programme in Nigeria for a long time. This needs to change.

The writer can be reached via jojookojie@yahoo.com or +2348029640010