Agriculture and the future of food.
Country: Nigeria
Name: Akeem Omotayo Sule.
Topic: Agriculture and the Future of Work.
Research Proposers: Supremarts Limited & Connexxion Agro-Allied.
Nigeria has a total area of 923,770 km² (356,669 mi²) and a total coastline of 853 km (530.0 mi). The country has a tropical climate with plenty of rainfall (FAO, 2022). Hitherto, agriculture is one way or the other fully addressed in 13 of the 17 SDG Goals, this shows how important the issue of food, education, water, land processes, raw materials, climate change amongst others should be taken.
Nigeria’s biggest obstacle in food security is to have a fair distribution of food amongst different classes for the people to achieve a better future. As a country, we need a blueprint to mitigate the challenges facing us a country and how to tackle them for the next 30 years using culture, technology, and inclusiveness.
Understanding the economics, competitive strategies and culture of the Nigerian people is key to self-sustaining agricultural programs, it’d help us understand the fundamentals of the people and the nature therein. Given our background of infrastructural progress, and a well-planned import and export history, it is time we focus on the whole agricultural food chain but first, addressing the issues in single units.
Sustainability is the main ingredient to increase and prosper the people of Nigeria, while population growth is increasing here, arable lands need to be properly utilized for food. We need to address how it would affect current rising population growth, climate change, food safety and security, changing the way people act, shaping the farmers, consumers and policymakers' behaviour in areas such as food wastage, climate control, consumption, storage and recycling. To maintain this, there is a need to promote small household farms in as many families as we could, knowing that approximately 90% of all farms globally are managed by a family or an individual while 2% of farms are regarded as large organized farming businesses which occupy 70% of the global food (UAA, 2019).
On the road to achieving food sustainability for the future of the Nigerian People, these are the most pressing areas to focus on;
1. Technology: To properly utilize land for food and energy; Food security and energy security is the future of modern agriculture to develop systems that could bring forth better yields.
2. Land Maximization: As lands in Nigeria keeps on shrinking due to the continuous use of chemicals and others for infrastructural use due to civilization.
3. Population: The current population of Nigeria is 218,717,804 (TradingEconomics, 2022) and are expected to have 401,315,000 people by 2050 (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-population/, 2022), if we do not maximize our resources such as land, energy, technology and food policies, we will be in danger.
4. Change of attitudes: As Nigerians progress and achieve more mid-level incomers, it simply means it’d come with changes in consumption, likely leading to waste.
5. Research system: Agriculture now extends beyond the farm, it is a global economy that addresses all aspects of life from medical, environmental, and social change etc. and we need to put everything necessary to excel in research of novel agriculture procedures.
6. Food Wastage.
7. Storage systems.
According to FAO, the average minimum daily energy requirement is about 1,800 calories per person,
and to feed the Nigeria's growing population under this condition, we’ll need far more food than we currently produce, doubling the arable land. Climate change is the biggest threat facing this but we can make up for this using technology in hindsight while maintaining mitigation methods.
What We Need To Do In Nigeria Today:
1. The Nigeria policy documents as a matter of urgency need to close the gap between the rural and urban settlement (Bertelsmann, 2020), thereby allowing the farming population and tech population mutually grow with modern agricultural techniques from traditional to advance methodologies, increased mechanization, automation of farms producing more yields with less human inputs and most importantly attract opportunities for the Nigeria Youths.
2. Provision of funding, machinery and subsidized farming accessories for smallholder farmers would go a long way in securing Food for the Nigerian people.
3. Land Preservation and Crop Rotation: Nigeria needs to secure and safeguard their land by resisting farmers from use of harmful chemicals, pesticides and the likes, meanwhile the attitude of rotation would give a healthier landscape for Nigerians to give health back to the people through good food and health to the land significantly.
4. Technology innovation in precision farming to maximize resources as best as we can. In order to achieve this, we need to improve Nigeria’s natural assets, have a stronger entrepreneurial base, a strong cultural heritage and technology introduced through a well-planned startup hub.
With this, we can turn the tides of Nigeria quickly from self-consumption to market economy, developing our internal logistics and infrastructure, using locally made optimized irrigation systems to remedy the impact of climate change, excessive use of water and chemicals through locally made technologies that optimize irrigation with the aim of driving all-year-round farming, boosting farmers’ yield whilst using 3x less water, fewer sensors and pipes than the average irrigation system while making real novel strides in the area of pest control devices, eCommerce for better sales and the likes.
Practical Analogy to avoid the use of GMOs and synthetic chemicals by addressing 3 main issues.
1. Affordability of irrigation systems in Nigeria: Irrigation systems are widely used in dry lands such as California. They provide great advantages such as moving water from one location to another to water plants that would otherwise not survive. Due to the high cost of installation and maintenance, this technology is not widely used, we need to modify this system to reduce the initial costs and make it affordable for Nigerian farmers.
2. Automation of the system for simplicity: We need the system to works with sensors for complete automation. After the installation of the irrigation system on the farm, the plants are provided with water whenever they need it without the intervention of the farm community.
3. Conjugation of several crop types in the same area: The current irrigation system’s drip outlet to plant ratio is a one-to-many ratio. Each outlet provides water to a zone rather than to a single plant. As such, the system is not restricted to a single type of crop and does not need to be reinstalled in the event the farmer would like to grow a different crop. Lastly, we install the pipes along the pipes. This reduces the number of needed pipes by half.
Lastly, the idea of local volunteerism needs to be propagated more and the focus should be capacity building and general knowledge on food systems in Nigeria, the people need to understand how all of this affects us and what we can do better from growing the food, distribution, proper preservation to prevent waste, climate change, sustainable agriculture, technology and future food impact as it relates to population for the future of the Nigerian people. Therefore, laws such as the National Development Strategy 2010–2030, Strategic Agric Dev Plan 2010–2020, Food Sovereignty, National Strategy for Climate Change Adaptation by the FAO in reference to the Nigeria needs to be implemented for creating a better future Together.
Thank you.
