AGRICULTURE: THE KEY TO A SECURED ECONOMIC FUTURE FOR NIGERIA
Agriculture at present, contributes an average of 21.96 percent of Nigeria's GDP and 24% of the the African continent’s GDP. In monetary terms, for the first quarter of 2020, Nigeria’s GDP was at #16.7 trillion naira and agriculture alone contributed #3.7 trillion. Given the fact that importation into Nigeria is fast dwindling compared to what it used to be in prior years, Nigerians have no choice but to rely on food grown and produced in the country. Agriculture has the capacity to become Nigeria's greatest economic strength as it used to be decades ago, hence, drastic measures need to be taken if agriculture is to reach full potential.

For agriculture to boom as it should in Nigeria, there is the need for the continuous de-risking of the agricultural sector to attract more investments and financing. NIRSAL Plc and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) have made commendable efforts to further de-risk agriculture and increase productivity by entering a partnership to ensure Nigerian farmers receive timely agrometeorological information and advisory services for application in their operations.

The partnership is quite peculiar as it focuses specifically on the drawing up of cropping calendars while leveraging on creation and development of climate-smart programmes that fall within NIRSAL’s Agricultural Commodity Ecological Areas (ACEAs), NIRSAL’s priority commodities, and the proper dimensioning of climatic & atmospheric events from an agricultural standpoint.

The constant diversification in climatic conditions, weather patterns is continually affecting agriculture, bringing about irregularities in the duration of farming seasons and uncertainty in terms of ideal planting and harvesting times. To this effect, the NIRSAL-NiMet partnership aims at staunching this problem by providing farmers with reliable information on weather conditions and other related data that will enhance their seasonal product quality and quantity and protect financiers’ investments in agribusiness.

The importance of this partnership is made all the more glaring as agricultural activities are dependent on time and with even the slightest delays in planting, maintaining or harvesting crops, it could have dire consequences such as reducing yields and revenues significantly.

NIRSAL’s Managing Director/CEO, Aliyu Abdulhameed, while speaking at the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signing ceremony between NIRSAL and NiMet at NIRSAL’s Head Office in Abuja, commented that NIRSAL’s aim in signing the contract was to extend support not just to large scale farmers but also smallholder farmers. This support is not restricted to just financial but extends to training, access to technology, financial advisory services, and at present, the provision of agrometeorological information to help guide them in their farming activities.

According to Mr. Albdulhameed, Nigerian farmers had before this period practiced agriculture based on outdated practices especially without technology and these practices could not deliver the results required to improve their incomes and livelihoods. However, with NIRSAL’s various technology-driven interventions, and now, with the NIRSAL-NiMet collaboration, farmers are being exposed to new methods which they are eagerly adopting because these new ideas have significant positive effects on finances.

NiMet’s Director-General/CEO, Prof. Sani Abubakar Mashi, while also speaking at the event noted that the partnership with NIRSAL was a way to accomplish NiMet’s mission of promoting the service of meteorology in agricultural activities and provision of meteorology consultancy services.
Mr. Abdulhameed further expressed confidence in the new partnership, stating that it would play a big role in ensuring that Nigerian farmers are in a better position to make valid information based decisions as regards planting, harvesting and other agricultural activities affected by the weather.
This, he enthused, would certainly be a good place for NIRSAL to start in realizing its vision of transforming the economy, delivering inclusive growth and positively impacting lives.

Prof. Sani also added that NiMet would provide the necessary support for NIRSAL in order to be as far reaching as possible by leveraging technology in designing and developing strategies for disseminating agrometeorological information to the country’s farmers. He gave the assurance that NiMet would cooperate with NIRSAL to develop specific cropping calendars in line with the NIRSAL’s focus commodities and provide the required agrometeorological information in accordance with identified Agricultural Commodity Ecological Areas (ACEAs).

NIRSAL’s strategy is to focus on commodities with their comparative advantage based on characteristics such as export value, industrial demand and consumer demand. These commodities include; 5 Industrial commodities, that is, Value-added Maize, Soya, Wheat, Cassava and Cotton; 4 Export commodities viz. Value-added Hibiscus, Sesame, Ginger and Shea; 3 Consumer commodities in Rice, Irish & Orange-fleshed Sweet Potatoes and High Iron Beans; 2 Controlled Environment Agricultural Commodities including Fresh Fruits & Vegetables and Aquaculture; Integrated Livestock Commodity; and lastly, Value-added Sugarcane & Cashew.

As the accomplishments and plans of NiMET and NIRSAL have proven, if given the right measure of support; financial and otherwise, agriculture will contribute more than 21.2 percent of Nigeria’s GDP as early as 2021.