Why Nigeria imports N381bn food annually

"Nigerian indigenous farmers can produce the food items in question if we can understand that agriculture is science and operates in a system and make it work as such," said Shadrack Madlion, executive director, Admiral Environmental Care, who presented a paper on technology inputs in NEI.

Said he: "With the Federal Government’s current emphasis on the rejuvenation and modernization of the agriculture sector, it has become necessary that relevant knowledge be made available to prospective and already practising farmers and stakeholders for capacity building and thereby working towards current policy of developing a new generation of modern farmers to replace the old ones."

Madlion advised that to take Nigeria out of the woods, we must introduce specialised fertilizers, automated irrigation system, biotechnology research, improved seedling, fuel and stable electricity, and geographical information system.

He said introduction of these technology inputs would bring about increase in farm yield, will make farming more efficient and easier, less labour-intensive, allow for effectiveness of irrigation for optimum water application, access to information about the geography of a particular area and soil research analysis as well s disease-resistant seeds.

Madlion told participants that Nigerian agriculture "is still in its primitive stage" as portrayed by the yield and quality of the product of virtually all Nigerian agricultural units, be it plants, livestock, ponds, etc.

Said he: "We have an average yield of 200 litre/lactation as against 8000 litres of others; our first calving is four to five years as against 22- 23 months; carcass weight at three years is 100 kilogrammes as against 1000 kilogramme of other exotic stocks; rate of calving is two years interval as against eight months."

Other comparisons made include, among others, groundnut 300 kilogramme average yield per hectare as against 2700 kilogramme of a Turkish, Spanish or Egyptian farmer; onions average yield per hectare is four metric tonnes as against 120 metrics tonnes of Yemen farmers; tomatoes five metric tonnes as against 100 metric tonnes for an Israeli farm; rice average yield of 1.5 metric tonnes per hectare as against 20 metric tonnes of that of a Thai farmer from the same unit by multiple cultivation.

Madlion noted moreover that we are still engaged in peasant fishing instead of fish farming/aqua-culture.