Despite its vast arable land and a youthful population, Nigeria continues to lag behind in the global food market, largely due to low level of mechanisation of its agricultural sector.
While other countries are leveraging modern technologies to boost productivity and scale, many Nigerian farmers still rely on manual tools and outdated methods, limiting their output and making it harder for the country to compete in international food supply chains.
Experts in separate interviews with Daily Independent said the gap is slowing efforts to achieve food sufficiency thereby leaving Nigeria vulnerable to rising food insecurity.
Adebowale Onafowora, founder and Managing Director of BIC Farms Concepts, said that poor mechanisation directly affects food production, leading to reduced crop yields and lower quality produce.
He said with a growing population and increasing food demands, poor mechanisation continues to impact Nigeria’s food sufficiency negativity.
While speaking on some of the long-term risks of poor mechanisation level, he said that Nigerian farmers struggle to compete with international counterparts and markets, leading to reduced exports and revenue.
He said in 2023, the province of Manitoba, in Canada, exported about $9 billion worth of food, while Nigeria did just about 30 percent of that.
“If you consider the fact that Manitoba is less than 0.5 percent of the Nigerian population, and seven months of the year is considered winter, the food output is massive because of good mechanisation.
You will agree that Nigeria’s competitiveness in the global food supply is seriously affected,” he noted.
Onafowora noted that insufficient food production is one of the major causes of food shortages, price increases, and decreased access to nutritious food.
“The bigger problem about food insufficiency is even on the future of Nigeria’s food production. The demography is aging and young people are not showing much interest because of poor mechanisation.”
He pointed out that the private sector can play a vital role in closing Nigeria’s mechanisation gap, just as we can see an example in the telecommunications and petroleum products refining sector.
“Companies like BIC Farms Concepts are developing innovative solutions such as hydroponics, tropical greenhouse, and precision irrigation systems to improve crop yields and reduce wastes.This has led to visible massive improvements and increase in all year round food production. “The private sector can introduce creative equipment leasing or sales services to farmers. Hello tractor introduced uberisation or gig economy based tractor service where farmers can share own underused equipment, among others.
He added that the private sector companies can offer creative financing options to farmers, enabling them to adopt modern farming techniques and technologies.
Tunde Banjoko, the Chairman, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Agric and Agro Allied group, said one major impact of poor mechanisation or lack of mechanisation is that it affects farmers output.
“With mechanisation, maybe where you are expecting 15, 20 tons, without mechanisation, you will be expecting maybe seven, eight tons per hectare, for a product like cassava and that is also replicated in other commodities as well.”
He said with mechanisation, farmers can cultivate more land and process more. “So the volume of output to the scope of work that can be done with human beings, there’s limited energy, but with machines, you can do more.
So it affects your output, it affects the scale of work, the scope of work and that is one major thing. If we continue with this low scale mechanisation, the impact would be that we’ll keep relying on imported products.
Nigeria will keep relying on other nations to feed us as a nation. “We will keep having rising costs of food because the food available will not be enough to feed our population. So if we keep relying on other nations, the price of commodities will keep going up.” He said that the private sector can invest in equipment and hiring.
“Yes, that’s what the private sector can do. They can invest in equipment and hire it to farmers, to co-operate, to communities, to government to help with the scale of work to be done.”
Banjoko said that the government is currently working on getting 10,000 tractors into the country to support mechanisation, that out of that, about 2,000 have arrived.
“So we are waiting for the modality for the distribution and the requirement for farmers to access this equipment.”
AfricanFarmer Mogaji, a food safety expert, said that mechanisation is a very critical issue and it must be at the centre of the country’s food security plan.
He said, “If farmers continue to use crude equipment, their poverty can never be eradicated. Farmers need to farm and harvest their produce using mechanisation to boost their productivity and profits, thus, impacting their livelihood,” Mogagi said.
He said that young people will only find agriculture attractive when it becomes fully mechanised and take it up as a profession. Femi Oke, Chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), said that poor mechanisation results in low yield and poor efficiency in the field which at the end lead to food shortage.
He said that the government is trying in it capacity by importing new modern technology in agriculture, adding that the role of the private sector is to come together and introduce capacity building for all the stakeholders, especially smallholder farmers and assist them with soft loans.
