North has 10m of Nigeria’s 14m small holder farmers — Expert
A Kano-based media expert, Alhaji Abdulkareem Mohammed, yesterday stated that, out of Nigeria’s 14 million small holder farmers of 20-24 age range, 10 million are from the North and that 5.3 million of the figure in the North West.
In a paper he presented at the Daily Trust North West farmer’s forum titled ‘The Green Alternative: Media as the Driving Force’, Alhaji Abdulkareem stated that Nigeria is saddled with the challenges of annual food importation bill that ran into trillions of naira, trade imbalance, depletion of foreign reserve and other economic vices that warranted the nation’s dependence on agricultural information and advisory services to ensure effective agricultural practices.
He added that out of 14 million small holder farmers 81% have access to radio and 59% have access to mobile phones, thereby making the need for right information at the right time for planning and decision making very important.
He added that information and knowledge are useful across the agriculture value chains to serve farmers, input suppliers, processors, traders, policy makers, development partners and researchers with the right inputs to act with.
According to him, there is a need to understand that the Federal Government is now focusing on agriculture to develop it across the agricultural value chains for the general public to understand what they ought to do in complementing government’s efforts.