By Jimoh Babatunde

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has reiterated the significance of extension services to the growth of agriculture in the country.

He regretted the low number of extension workers in his country, standing at a ratio of one extension worker to 8,000 farmers.

Audu-Ogbeh

Ogbeh made the remarks at the Sasakawa Symposium on “Contributing to Social security and jobs through agriculture-30 Years of Sasakawa in Africa”, held at the Sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI) in Nairobi, Kenya.

He said one of the lessons of the program is the importance of a virile extension system to enhancing agricultural productivity and competitiveness.

“In Nigeria, it underscores the need for us as a nation to revive the extension service system, which is almost getting moribund. Incidentally, a virile agricultural extension system used to be one of the pillars of our agriculture in the past. We are committed to reactivating it under the Buhari administration.

“Farmers need support and education on new technology that will help them to reap maximum benefits from their farms,” said Ogbeh.
Audu Ogbeh said the SG2000 programme succeeded largely because capacity was built consistently over time, because the capacity-building component was recognized as an important element of programme success. “This is worth re-stating as an objective contributory factor to success.

“Notwithstanding the key role that the smallholder farmer is still playing in supporting us to achieve food sufficiency and food security, we need the entry of big players in the agriculture industry to bring innovation, quality assurance, entrepreneurship, modern technology, finance, global good practices and expanded markets to radically improve the fortunes of this sector so that it can attract multiple players to drive it as a profitable business.

“This, invariably, means giving almost equal attention to both the smallholder and large scale/ commercial farmers as complementary and strategic role players in agricultural development.

Audu Ogbeh told his audience that the Green Alternative Roadmap Agriculture Promotion Policy, which was recently launched in the country , has ingrained the lessons of the Sasakawa Programme in many significant ways.

“It is, first and foremost, a national strategy and an action plan that recognizes the need to harness the strengths and resources of all the multi-stakeholders in the agricultural and rural development sector towards effectively rebuilding and reinvigorating the sector as part of a comprehensive plan of achieving the diversification of the national economy from an oil dependent led growth.

“The Green Alternative Roadmap, therefore, recognizes the key role of both the smallholder farmer and the large scale farmer in maximizing agricultural output, achieving increased efficiency of agricultural operations, systems and practices through private sector engagement, by entrusting the private sector with the role of the main growth driver of the agricultural sector.”

He added that the private sector is also saddled with the responsibility of creating linkages with small holder farmers by availing them of better organization methods, technological access, financial services, linkages to input supply chains and markets, among others.