Will Smallholder Farmers Remain Focal to the Development of Agriculture in Nigeria?

Small holder farmers (SHF) are crucial part of the operating system of food production in Nigeria. They require a rather more robust, strategic and sustainable interventions to address many limitations they face for increased productivities and efficiencies.

I have had quite some deep interactions and close relationships with their daily lives across different agro-ecologies in Nigeria. They have quite a number of excellent qualities in common. Some of the qualities that is readily displayed are intelligence, resilience, focus, willingness to learn. They often showcase various degrees of helplessness, they are marginalized and vulnerable. Beyond their many challenges, they have carved out a life of unrelenting dedication to the course of food production.

Most importantly, they remain the core part of food production in Nigeria. The agriculture and food system in Nigeria as it currently portrays will asphyxiate if they are absent. They play critical roles in the operations of rural economy with bold consequential impact of promoting shared prosperity.

Sadly, they have not been impacted as required, despite myriads of funds, programmes and supports; we have since been picking on symptoms rather than a coordinated system to address their peculiarities for developmental interventions. Many incentives and palliatives channeled to them are misaligned to their needs and objectives.

Who are Smallholder Farmers?

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, smallholders are small-scale farmers, pastoralists, forest keepers, fishers that manage production areas usually between less than one hectare to about ten hectares. They are considered by family-focused motives, utilising largely family labour and using part of the produce for family consumption.

However, a smallholder farmer is typically considered in Nigeria as a farmer who own plots of land that is less than 5 acres, use it to farm subsistence crops and one or two cash crops. A small scale farmer depends heavily on his/her efficiency in the utilisation of the resources available.

Smallholder farmers produce over 80% of most food consumed in Nigeria. They play active roles in the food production processes in the country and consequently form the pillar in the country’s domestic food production supply. They play critical roles in Nigeria’s food system and have increasingly become the drivers of food security.

Specific actionable plans towards the development of agriculture and agribusiness in Nigeria fundamentally require a bottom-top approach to addressing the challenges. At the very basics, verifiable and categorised real-time database of farmers should be available that will include salient information like bio-data, farming information and history.

The database will inevitably show us real figures about these champions (SHF) ensuring we do not starve. For instance recent study showed that there was increase in youth participation in Nigerian agriculture between 2018 and 2021. Perhaps a further study around high rate of young farmers turnover would show us that the young people veering into agriculture especially primary production exited abruptly within the first 18 months. With my interaction with over 20,000 farmers directly and by proxy, it was obvious that the pledged solutions expected to trickle down to SHFs, and that spelt good time for the young people were not hitting the bulls’ eye. For food production to be sustained and to grow, we must retain the fervor of young minds which requires that agriculture must essentially be profitable, treated as real business. A system that will deliver these must be developed, we must migrate communities of smallholder rural farmers into hubs of large scale farmers engaging technology producing with cutting edge science, building transgenerational food systems.

Interventions should stay customised to farmers' unique needs. The underlying goal should remain increased productivity, profitability and sustainability, growth and expansion, mechanisation, building robust and inclusive value chain, and quite notably, true prosperity. To experience actual development of agriculture and agribusiness in Nigeria, a transformation of the smallholder farmers is indispensable. The transformation will deliver to them an energy level that will overcome their limitations and help transit them from the current realities.

What realities?

1. No verifiable evidence of their business operation. Most of them have no books, no record, no measurement and therefore no management. Their operations are in most cases not profitable. I love to say that these farmers are subsidizing our food. Because they do not keep records, they are not aware how much loss they incur.

2. Palliatives in form of inputs finance and others do not timely address their operational needs and in some cases do not get to them.

3. They experience what I refer to as ‘isolated mismanagement’. They are not aggregated, clustered and mechanised. They therefore experience technical, personnel and management challenges that greatly impact them as independent farmers but can be shared with less impact if they operate as a group.

4. The demography is changing. Rural-urban migration is leading an overwhelming exodus with grave implications. The next generation of farmers is seeing how the older ones struggle and the youngsters would prefer menial jobs in the city than sitting on an unprofitable venture.

5. They are helpless. They need the required stimulation for rejuvenation at three levels- rejuvenation of the soil, their pockets and their lives. ?

It is against the foregoing that it becomes essential to address these limitations in a systematic, strategic and developmental manner with a view to transit them to a more productive, profitable and sustainable agribusiness enterprise. This will lead the farmers to increase their hectarage, expand their operations, and contribute more meaningfully to the economy.

Sometimes I wonder what our yardsticks were, measuring the success of our various interventions if beneficiaries are not becoming more efficient, more profitable and sustainable. I wonder why beneficiaries are not mechanized after 10 years of these supports, a 1 hectare farmer ten years ago still a 1 hectare farmer till date despite various interventions. (case study of a rice producing community in Yewa North Local Government, Ogun State)

How can these be achieved?

1. Targeted, implementable and measurable developmental policies towards the SHF that will address root cause problems and not the symptoms of their challenges. For example, poor yields, low profitability, post-harvest losses, are all symptoms. Nonexistent record keeping, inaccessibility to affordable credits and loans, poor infrastructures, low or no adoption of sustainability practices and many others are the root causes.

2. Mechanization adoption methods. We cannot win the coming war against hunger except we employ technology, subsistence farming will not even drive us halfway. We miserably operate very weak mechanization drive. For instance, SHF may not afford the cost of mechanization as an independent entity but could leverage on aggregation and cluster formation to embrace it. The unit economics to operate a tractor for a 2-5hectares land preparation for example doesn’t add up compared to operating 100-500hectares land cultivation. Even within improperly clustered farmers, the costs of transporting tractors from one small farmland to another could address the cost of other mechanized operation. The more centralized and aggregated the farmlands are the less incurred costs. While preparing papers to introduce mechanization as intervention to farmers we must do well to do proper clustering.

3. Cluster formation of smallholder famers. A well-structured clustering of farmers and farming communities will enhance increased accessibility to more benefits like the economies of scale where costs of operation can be shared and spread across more area under cultivation per unit time. Costs of security, mapping, mechanization, maintenance, meteorological services, extension services, drone services, storage, logistics and many others.

4. Deliberate training of SHF to become agribusiness conscious. They need to know their numbers, business value and stay ready for growth. This begins with the consciousness of record-keeping, how records should be kept, and the associated advantages.

5. Well directed interventions with true reflection of measurable impact. For example the provision of infrastructural facilities to a clustered SHF group for reducing post-harvest losses, centralised post-harvest process equipment, and many others.

6. Market linkage so as to form a market-pulled production. A coordinated marketing framework is most required for SHF to address unplanned and rejected commodities production common among SHF.

Why is it necessary to Help SHF?

It is important to assist SHF to become more profitable and operate as an agribusiness in the true sense of the word. This is absolutely required as a nation to experience meaningful growth and expansion in our production indices that will lead to the expected true developmental milestones.

The so-called assistance and palliatives administered as experienced as at today has limited impact to address the root causes but only serve as partial treatment of the symptoms. No wonder the same symptoms are being experienced year-in-year-out. Our projections are not favourable if the level of assistance given to SHF today will subsist.

The SHF need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound) in their operations and objectives while they grow and expand. The system should be able to provide that environment for them. Rather than increase and expand they will become progressively discouraged, demotivated, while producing below their potential. Smallholding may become mini and perhaps micro holding. As old age sets in, they are left to fate, poverty, hopelessness and ultimately the end of an era. The process and activities of food production becomes discontinued with others who naturally should step into the shoes retreating into their shells or producing food at a far less potential that the predecessors.

Will SHF remain focal to the Agricultural Development in Nigeria?

Yes, but if and only if they are programmed to grow, expand and transition into relatively bigger, commercial farms. SHF should be able to profitably and sustainably increase their hectarage from say 1 hectare to 3 hectares, 10-15 hectares in a particular period of time.

The strategic development of SHF will by extension affects other areas of the value chains, create robust value chain processes, promote value addition including processing and ultimately ensure food security.

The operations of smallholding can therefore become a continuum indicating a phasal developmental experience rather than a stationary one. In actual fact, a stationary one will become less relevant till it goes into oblivion.

Why?

It is important to note that the population is growing, food demands are consequently increasing. The future requirement for food production far outstrips our current scenarios. It does not support today’s means and methods of addressing the SHF. Scaling becomes an important and envisaged part of operating their agribusiness enterprise. Without developmental plan for scaling SHF, the challenges will become overwhelming.

In conclusion, #SHF should be associated to growth and scale. Every associated policies and interventions should deliberately reflect this especially in the light of the current and future landscape of agricultural development.

It is high time we stopped the form of assistance rendered to #SHF as a means to ensuring their marginal survival and not programmed to make them thrive. I am absolutely not against supporting SHF, but I am of the opinion that true development in this regard should entail a robust approach while addressing the root causes and promote policies that will enable them break through their repeated cycles of weakness and helplessness for measured growth and expansion.