Questions answered here: - What is Agriculture Option and how can it play a key role in Nigeria's food sector? - What is the current state of employment and does it give hope that more young people will consider agriculture as an economic option? - What is the potential result if a fraction of Nigeria's youth adopt agriculture?
The agriculture option (TAO) is proposed to make agriculture a viable economic option for young people, by supporting the sustainable evolution of the average Nigerian agriculturist to a young person.
Its major objective is to guide young people on how they can cultivate on between 20 and 50 hectares of land, or its equivalent in non-crop value chains or practice, with infrastructure, equipment, and processing capacity, in an integrated agriculture outlook.Â
Given the potential for such a person to earn at least ₦50 million per annum from this practice, this outlook should be one of Nigeria’s intentional economic and nation-building thrust.
The agriculture option should be a mission to deploy agriculture as a strong economic and human development pillar for nation-building in Nigeria. It should declare that it will responsibly engage in promising businesses that combine strong models with technology and capacity development to provide accessible economic opportunities in agriculture to Nigerian farmers, traders and general agriculturists.
It should not be a fleeting trend but be seen in a futuristic context. The future of business using new systems and technology to meet with agriculture. The future of facilitating a system of strong value chain interactions. The future of standing with agriculture.
For stakeholders who have been keenly involved in Nigeria’s agriculture transformation and those who have supported value chain interactions using digital capabilities and innovative models, all key actors need to reimagine themselves in a technology-driven ecosystem and embark on a transformation journey.
Moreover, there seems to be a consensus that agriculture has the potential to generate good income job opportunities for millions of youths.
It is stated In the communique of the 2016 Youth Agribusiness, Leadership and Entrepreneur Summit on Innovation, which advocated for governments and organisations to “mainstream agribusiness” by promoting youth entrepreneurship in agriculture.
Other worthy mentions include the 2014 African Union Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods, which binds member states to job creation for at least 30% of youth in agricultural value chains.
The fourth principle for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems is also championing the engagement and empowerment of youth by advancing their access to extension, advisory, and financial services, including innovation and new technologies.
This resonates with the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) position, which suggests that by harnessing youths’ innovative potential, utilising new technologies, and taking advantage of new opportunities in emerging value chains, young agri-entrepreneurs could create thriving businesses and tackle the challenge of feeding a growing population.
The time is here to create the needed enablers for the youth to take advantage of the business opportunities in the agriculture sector. Therefore, TAO for economic development and nation-building must focus on the youth.
The youths of Nigeria can be rapidly equipped with finance, skills, and technology. They can be harnessed to support homegrown supply to Nigeria’s increasing demand for food and agricultural raw materials.
This has the potential to grow the economy, providing productive economic engagement and jobs while returning hope to young people. For example, the effective engagement of 2 million youths in agriculture in an integrated effort of land availability, financing and partnership platforms holds the potential to create about 30 million jobs, 80 million metric tons (MT) of export quality and global standard agricultural produce, with a potential for rapid annual growth.
But enough about the future and its potential. Let’s look at the current state of things to understand how important TAO is.
The current picture
Indeed, agriculture has become knowledge-intensive; therefore, attracting and retaining young people in agriculture is key to a green revolution that will reduce unemployment.
Extrapolating simply from the World Bank’s projection on Africa’s food market at $1 trillion in 2030, Nigeria’s food market will grow to about $250 billion in the same period, and if things remain as they are in Nigeria’s agriculture, about 84% of the country’s food requirement will be imported. According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), 20 million young, educated Nigerians may not find jobs in 2030.
The FAO recognises that engaging youths in agriculture have been increasingly underscored at national, regional, and global levels. As such, there is an urgent need for opportunities to empower the youth to carry out and benefit from responsible agricultural investments by giving launch pads to those most concerned —young farmers, agri-entrepreneurs, and workers.
Are we missing an opportunity?
There has never been a paucity of efforts by the government and other stakeholders in Nigeria to institute interventions that will deliver far-reaching agricultural transformation. Between 2015 and 2022, aggregate intervention efforts in agriculture disbursed over ₦1 trillion directly reached over 3 million farmers, providing thousands of jobs and expanding business opportunities for agribusinesses across Nigeria.
The overall objectives range from creating the condition for the emergence of a new generation of farmers, agribusiness entrepreneurs and job opportunities, increasing access to credit financing to the agricultural sector, enabling lower importation of agricultural commodities, growing the external reserves, and boosting capacity utilisation of agricultural firms.
However, the typical profile of these beneficiaries is that of a 43-year-old man with primary education. By this, the average recipient of Nigeria’s agricultural intervention may not be open to innovation and growth, has a shorter productive life, and represents only 4% of the population.
Even though agricultural intervention efforts are purportedly far-reaching, the distribution of farmers and other value chain participants typically covered has been skewed against a major and potentially impactful demographic group – the youth.
In an economy where 20 million educated youths may not find jobs by 2030, not focusing agricultural development efforts on young people-the productive heart of a nation, is a missed opportunity, one that has the potential to address the major pain points of youth unemployment and food security in Nigeria.
The average age in Nigeria is 17.5, and the youth–ages 18-35 comprise 30% of the population. According to the National Bureau for Statistics (NBS), as of the third quarter of 2018, 68.7% of young people in the labour force aged 15-24 years were either underemployed (work for less than 20 hours a week) or unemployed (willing and actively seeking to work), while the combined rate for the 25–34-year age group stood at 45.1%.
In addition, these age groups (15-24 years and 25-34 years) represent the youth population in Nigeria and have a combined unemployment and underemployment rate of 55.4% or 24.5 million (13.1 million unemployed and another 11.3 million underemployed). The NBS also stated that young people are more likely to face difficulties securing full-time employment and are more likely to be completely idle.
Considering the unharnessed interest of young people in Agriculture, Nigeria may be missing an opportunity to provide sustainable food security and youth productivity with the same effort.
This was spotlighted in a 2019 Youth Engagement Survey conducted by AgroMall-a Nigerian agricultural company, which comprised of 163 respondents (age 18 – 35 years), and sample clusters reflecting the six geo-political zones in Nigeria, (96% having a tertiary educational qualification, 79.8% male and 20.2% female).
75% of the respondents expressed their determination to create an agricultural enterprise, whilst 79% indicated their willingness to be trained in ICT for digital agriculture.
For example, take the over 1.1million hectares of farmland cultivated by about 1.05 million farmers under Nigeria’s Anchor Borrowers Programme (Nigeria’s flagship agricultural intervention of the Buhari administration) up till 2019.
If 250 thousand educated young farmers had cultivated 50% (500 thousand hectares), up to 1 million jobs and 3 million metric tons of grains at ₦285 billion farmgate value could have been produced directly by young people.
This is over 100% efficiency growth over Nigeria’s current grain yield.
A deliberate focus of half of Nigeria’s agricultural intervention effort on digital technology-supported youth engagement in agriculture will address some clear and present socio-economic challenges facing Nigeria, creating data-driven insights and a favourable perception of agriculture.
The big picture
Nigeria’s population of 218 million people in 2022 is characterised by a widening youth bulge.
Fueled by a population growth rate of 2.62%, the youth population is expected to increase significantly. Targeting youth-led farming and agribusinesses will enhance agricultural development efforts, enhance immediate outcomes, have a long-term economic impact, and create a positive perception in Nigeria. This can potentially become an agriculture and job creation transformation platform.
With this, Nigeria’s policymakers and businesses are presented with an opportunity to provide both sustainable food security and youth productivity with the same effort and an outlook that targets the African food market, estimated to reach 1 trillion dollars in 2030 (World Bank).
The prospect for Nigeria is that its agricultural production will compete with and potentially upturn 84% of supply to the African food market, which is currently imported from outside Africa.
The newly signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) further creates twin opportunities for Nigeria to be a significant player in this market, as it has an abundance of youth workforce and arable land. Similarly, Nigeria has the potential of digital technology to support exponential growth and scale in agricultural production for the African market while solving the problem of the projected 24.5 million youth without jobs or underemployed.
Educated young farmers will adopt the best agronomy and extension practices, farm, and digital technology. They can be supported by young farm hands and youth-led agribusiness owners in input supply, logistics, aggregation, and processing. Their digital technology-supported operations will help provide situational awareness across the value chains, generate data for policy and plans, and create positive perception and reportage through new media.
We believe that if 2 million educated young farmers are engaged in cultivating 10 million hectares across crop and livestock value chains–focusing on 7 out of the ten identified major commodities – Rice, Maize, Cassava, Cocoa, Tomato, Cotton, and Oil Palm; 30 million jobs and up to 80m Metric Tons (MT) of grains at ₦4.2 trillion farmgate value (₦105,000 average price per ton) could be produced directly by young people per farming cycle.
The youths are better positioned to achieve multiple farming cycles per annum as they adopt technology, digital agriculture, and market access capabilities. Therefore, annual production numbers can hit ₦8.4 trillion.
These output levels at just 5 hectares per capita translated to about ₦8 million per capita, outperforming existing minimum wage jobs that most youths are currently jostling for. An outlook to take hectarage to 50 per capita, in addition to processing capacity, will translate to over ₦50 million per capita. When aggregated, it will create a prosperous youth and agriculture-led economy.
