Pesident Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday said the sharp decrease in oil prices did not take the Federal Government by surprise.
He said for over three years, his administration had been designing and implementing Agricultural Transformation Agenda in order to serve as a buffer.
Jonathan spoke during the inauguration of the Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme and the Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria, held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The N37bn YEAP, a component of the ATA, is designed to raise a new cadre of young farmers and agribusiness leaders in Nigeria with the initial target of reaching up to 760,000 youths over five years.
With $100m capitalisation target, FAFIN on the other hand, is targeted at increasing financing to Nigeria’s small and medium enterprises in agriculture.
Describing the agriculture sector as vital to the nation’s economy, Jonathan said the recent decline in the price of oil further underscored the need for the diversification of Nigeria’s economy.
He said, “The recent decline in the price of crude oil further underscores the necessity to rapidly diversify our economy away from dependency on crude oil.
“By producing our own food, we will save scarce foreign exchange, reduce dependence on food imports, while reviving our rural areas and creating wealth for our farmers.
“The decline in the price of crude oil did not take us by surprise.
“For the past three years, we had been engaged in a carefully designed and implemented agricultural transformation agenda.
“Our massive food production efforts, which led to the production of 21 million metric tonnes of food in the past three years, has created a buffer and mitigated the impact of the devaluation on food prices.”
The President observed that the nation’s food import bill declined from N1.1trn in 2009 to N624bn by December of 2013 and had continued to decline.
He noted that the electronic wallet system, which allows the government to reach farmers with subsidised seeds and fertilizers via mobile phones, had become the backbone of a more modern agricultural sector.
The President added that over 14 million farmers had received their subsidised farm inputs through the e-wallet system.
Jonathan further disclosed that over $5.6bn of new private sector investments had also come into the agricultural sector, showing that local and foreign businesses see Nigeria’s agricultural sector as very viable for investments.
The President said to further boost the performance of the agriculture sector, Nigeria needed younger and more entrepreneurial commercial farmers.
He said the rapidly ageing population of farmers posed a significant challenge and unless younger farmers were quickly developed, the nation’s future food security and competitiveness in agriculture would be compromised.
He said that was why the government was focusing on programmes that would engage the youths in profitable and viable economic activities along the agricultural value chains, including commercial farming, processing, value addition, logistics, transport and marketing of value added agricultural products.
The President added, “I am confident that several young millionaires and even billionaires of Nigeria will come out of the agriculture sector.
“But before we can successfully attract a lot of youths into the agriculture sector, we must replace the hoes and cutlasses with modern farm machinery.
“Agriculture should not be synonymous with hard labour or rural life.
“To drive the modernisation of the agriculture sector, I launched the Agricultural Equipment Hiring Enterprises, a private sector-driven programme that will provide mechanised services for farmers across the country.
“By the end of December 2014, a total of 80 agricultural equipment hiring centres would have become fully established across the country.
“Over the next two years, a total of 1,200 of the agricultural equipment hiring centres would be established across the nation.
“I am pleased to see that some of the young commercial farmers are already benefiting from the Federal Government mechanisation support on their farms.
“We must take the hoes and cutlasses away from the farms and replace them with tractors and mechanised equipment.”
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, described the launch of the two initiatives as the peak of a process that started three years ago and targeted at searching for young farmers that would take the nation to a greater height. Adesina also observed that “as the price of crude oil falls, the new currency for Nigeria will be agriculture, which will lead the nation to a greater future.”
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