THE WAY FORWARD II(BACK TO FARM)

Lack of investment and machinery has been the bane of Nigerian agriculture, lets look at it critically the medium/large scale farmers make up less than 30% of Nigerian farmers yet they face the risk loosing their investments to bad government policy, insecurity, capitalists over-dominating the market and majorly poor farming methods. Some of these farmers know what equipment to purchase but lack the purchasing power while others actually have the purchasing power but lack the know how. We have to first streamline our farming methods to the most efficient farming system (efficient in cost and technology) then get d right farming equipment that would at least semi-mechanize our farming systems. On the other hand with the growing youth population, Nigeria is not in short supply of Labor the only problem is convincing these teaming youths to embrace agriculture. One definitely not achieve that subsistence farming methods (even if I were the one I'll prefer to bunker oil, it requires less energy, time and investments while raking in more money). How do we get more investment into agriculture? The answer is . . . From you and I. If the government have proven to me that if I invest in agriculture, it would help me manage my fund, assure me security and profit then why not. Almost every civil servants and other company employees operate special savings for retirement and funny enough when these staff finally retire, because they have little or no experience in business end up getting duped or the like after retirement. Some of them even try to invest their savings to grow their retirement checks but for lack of time to monitor their businesses they end up loosing all their investments. These category make up over 50% of Nigeria's labor force. ABDULAZIZ MALA @yerwafato