FG, States Urged to Modernise Small Holder Farming, Promote Agribusiness 

Emmanuel Ugwu-Nwogo in Umuahia

Governments at both federal and states have been urged to give maximum encouragement to small holder farmers and processors in their policy frameworks towards the attainment of food security and enhancement of agribusiness.

A renowned expert in food engineering, Professor Michael Ngadi gave the advice in a public lecture he delivered at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike (MOUAU), entitled, “Modernising Smallholder Agrifood Systems.”

He said smallholder farmers and processors are central in global food systems particularly in developing and transition countries, hence the need to give them maximum support.

Ngadi, who is a professor of Bioresource engineering and Director, Integrated Food and Bioprocessing programme, Department of Bioresource Engineering, McGill University Montreal, Canada, noted that agriculture is largely practiced in Nigeria at smallholder level.

He stated, “There is something good about the smallholder farming system as practised by over 70 percent of Nigeria’s population, which traditionally provide food for the people over the years.”

However, Ngadi said smallholder operators (still), “struggle with limited resources, market access, and outdated practices that severely limit or hinder their enormous potential.
“There is urgent need to transform the agrifood systems to function at scale in the light of other cross linking and exacerbating pressures of population growth, poverty, climate change, energy and sustainability,” he said.

The bioresource engineer said that with   “appropriate scale technologies (the smallholder actors operators) would be equipped with “tools that will enable them to optimize their resources and compete effectively”.

Ngadi, who has posted over 30 years experience in food engineering and specialises in developing advanced emerging technologies for monitoring and controlling
agri-food processing systems, stated that the smallholder farming cannot be easily phased out. Instead, what is needed is the restructuring of the smallholder farming system, “to benefit from modernisation of the value chain”.

This, according to him, is because Nigeria’s smallholder farming system entails large population with small farm sizes and low outputs as against small population with large farm sizes and high outputs as obtainable in developed countries.

In his remarks, the Vice-Chancellor of MOUAU, Professor Maduebibisi Ofo Iwe, pointed out that there was no denying the fact that innovation is the way forward in the nation’s quest for food security.

“We must find a way to improve what we do in the whole gamut of farming,” he said.