Why Nigeria needs programme for youths in agriculture -By Olukayode Oyeleye

We are paying the huge price for the predominant focus on our oil-led economy to the abandonment of agriculture. Our population is too big to continue to depend on other nations for food importation.

We are now faced with tough challenges as a nation and we need to urgently take decisions to reposition our economy. Only recently, there was a global slump in oil fortune and Nigeria is significantly affected. We therefore need to think innovatively.

We need to tap into the energy, enthusiasm, knowledge and exuberance of our youthful population in boosting our food supply and, by extension, our economy.

Considering the competitive nature of global agricultural markets, with changing technologies, demands for quality and standards, there is the need to change labour composition of the agricultural sector from the ageing population to the vibrant and energetic ones.

Achieving a sustainable transformation of the agricultural sector requires a structural change in the labour composition of the sector. The farming population is ageing rapidly and unable to meet the increasingly complex challenges of markets and technology. Nigeria currently has farmers ageing between 46 and 60 years. To feed our rising population well into the future, we will need young commercial farmers. We also need to create jobs for our many unemployed youth and the agricultural sector holds the greatest potential to create millions of jobs. Government has developed a presidential initiative on Youth in Agribusiness to attract the youth into agriculture. The new initiative is targeting the creation of about 1 million jobs across the nation. The Federal Government will work with partnerships with state governments to put in place technical training facilities, business skills acquisition centers, entrepreneurship development centers.

They will be complemented by access to land, finance and mechanised service centres. The federal government, under its Youth in Agric-business, is targeting to raise one million young farmers by 2015 who would take agriculture as a profession and business in order to boost agricultural productivity, create employment and enhance food security in Nigeria.

I am pleased to announce that, next Tuesday, Mr. President will launch the National Presidential Initiative on Youth Employment in Agricultural Programme (YEAP), a new initiative to create a new generation of young farmers that will help transform the agricultural sector and feed Nigeria today and well into the future. They will be called “Nagropreneurs”.

Our goal is to create one million young agricultural entrepreneurs in our country by 2015.

The agricultural sector requires new skills, younger and more entrepreneurial farmers, who will be able to compete at the global scale. They must be versed in business, to be able to run sound agric-business that will make Nigeria’s agriculture modern, commercial and profitable.

As part of the measures to attract youth in agriculture, the federal government in collaboration with commercial banks would provide loans at single digit rates as well as make them to have access to land.

Mechanisation of agriculture will help to overcome the drudgery that discourages many youths from engaging in agriculture.

There is a need to re-design the university curriculum to develop business entrepreneurship for students, to create a new cadre of farmers in Nigeria.

There must also be an overhaul of the private sector agriculture to encourage the youth. We must retrain our students to become job creators, not job hunters. The faculties of agriculture and the Universities of agriculture need to change their curriculum to be in line with the realities of the labour markets and prepare students with practical technical and business skills they need to set up agribusinesses. This will require linking of the faculties of agriculture and business administration to set up agribusiness entrepreneurship centres. These centres should be used to provide technical farming skills as well as agribusiness management skills for young commercial farmers.

To get the youth into agriculture, we must rapidly mechanise our agriculture. Data show that Nigeria has less than 20,000 functioning tractors in the country, one of the lowest in the world.

There is the need to re-brand agriculture; and low income, low self-esteem and deplorable living conditions of farmers should be addressed to attract youth to agriculture.

Providing cheaper loans to farmers was part of strategies to achieve the transformation agenda of his administration in the agricultural sector.

A critical success factor to the transformation agenda for the agricultural sector is access to affordable finance for farmers and agribusinesses.

Government will continue to develop innovative financing mechanisms to make agricultural credit more affordable.

Agriculture as a business holds a bright future for our country, especially for the youths. Unemployment among our youths is one of the biggest challenges.

The time has come to create jobs and create a new foundation for Nigeria’s economic growth. There is need to get younger farmers, especially young graduates and young school leavers to take up agriculture as a business.

It is exciting that a lot of young people now see agriculture as a viable business opportunity. In order to encourage young people and create another cadre of young dynamic and entrepreneurial commercial farmers and agro businesses, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has developed the Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme.

Over the next five years this programme will see the emergence of young graduates and school leavers across the six geo-political zones into commercial farming and agribusiness.

They will be called Nagropreneurs. These Nagropreneurs, through their businesses, will create jobs for hundreds of thousands of Nigerian youths. Let me use this platform to call on all young people to take advantage of this opportunity.