By David Lawani, Abuja
The Coordinator of Youth Farmers Network, YFN, Abubarkar Bamai Musa has said education remained a major challenge faced by young farmers, adding that he will continue to support efforts for their training and exposure to modern skills in agriculture development.
He stated that the organisation is meant to help young people achieve their aims and objectives in Agriculture and that the network was working on how to connect young people with opportunities in Agriculture by attracting, educating and supporting them.
Musa said the future of farmers is bright only if they can locate the opportunities despite the initial challenges.
“There are a lot of challenges, in the agricultural sector, which made the young people not fully involved. The young people look at agriculture as a venture for retirees to come and invest after their service and as a second alternative that is why we don’t have a lot of innovations and educated people practising in the agricultural sector.
“I believe education is very important and creating a lot of awareness between them ( herders and Farmer) is very important. If you are a farmer, it doesn’t mean you (herders) will use your animals to feed on my farm” and that there must be innovations and modern ways of tackling all these issues. “If you look at the population percentage of people farming in Nigeria, you’ll find out that 40-45 per cent of the farmer are youth from rural areas”, he said.
Speaking on the area of Youths involvement in Agriculture, the coordinator added that most of the youth in the rural areas “don’t have access to formal education, modern agriculture or capacity building and technicalities, adding that the Nigerian Young Farmers Network would create programmes and activities that would improve on modern agricultural development.
“The other Fulani people or herdsmen on the other side don’t have any opportunity for capacity building and advanced technologies towards how they can manage themselves compose themselves, showing them what they are doing is wrong.”
“Being in this office is part of the critical situation I am looking into and would consult a lot of stakeholders and consultants to see how we can bring a blueprint or framework to reduce all these activities in this country which have to go in a modern way.
“Definitely we have the issue of insecurity in this country. I have a colleague of mine that I told you had a farm recently in the northwestern part of the country. After the harvest, they (bandits) set fire on the farm. It raised a lot of alarm. It seems this country is at war because of insecurity and food security”, he noted.
Musa further said “we need to notify our security agencies on this critical issue. They are doing well but they have to improve to make this country a better place for the young people to practice agriculture.”
“We are looking at the complete chain not only farming, but we also have to look at the processing itself, after processing, the of taking, most of our people are farmers, we have to look at various channels; I know Nigeria give priority to the production of rice, maize, we have to look at the farmers that farm tomatoes, some of them farm oranges, beans etc.
He added: ” Unfortunately, you’ll find out that preservation has been a big issue for them. They invest a lot. Let’s look at Benue, for example, you’ll find out that someone has a lot of oranges but there’s no processing company down there. So, we have to look for investors to come and invest in these companies which help in the employment of the youths down there.
“If you look at the tomatoes processing company like from katsina someone will take a truck of tomatoes to Lagos and becomes stranded in selling them there.. So, in our locality, we need a mini processing company that will help in processing tomatoes there and it will help a lot of people and eradicate unemployment we are facing in this country.
” We are working with Research Institute of seedlings we find out that this is the major key issue of farming in Nigeria. You find out that you waste a lot of time and resources and you don’t get the required yield which discourages a lot of people to go back to the farm. After this we want to see how we can get support to the youth not only farming, we have women involved too. We have Nigerian young farmer’s women. I’m giving more priority to that to look at gender equality and inclusion, that’s why we are looking at 1,2,5 and 8 of the sustainable development goals.
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“We are looking at how to eradicate poverty, zero hunger, economic growth and wealth creation. So this is something I want to emphasize and focus on. We want the women to participate not when you have to go to the farm. They create small greenhouses and make money, mini fish ponds and poultry. That’s why we are going to have a dashboard on the platform to connect a farmer to the buyer. We are also looking at embracing a lot of technology. For example, I saw someone on BBC that wasn’t educated but made a water pump machine.
“Let’s say we bring this guy and give him all the support we won’t have to go to China and India to buy a water pump. These are the kind of innovations we want to bring to the people. We are looking at the Eco-system where everybody can participate. So with that, the Nigerian Young Farmers Network has a lot to do with the young people of Nigeria. We believe we are the ones to turn the economic status of the country.
“Mr President is always calling the youths to participate in Agriculture. If you look back then in Kano they did the groundnut pyramids and all these people are youths so we believe we can do far more better than them, we just need the opportunity and need them to come in and support and will make Nigeria proud’, he declared.
