Journalism Communication and Media Centre, an NGO, on Monday in Abuja, urged government at all levels to introduce innovations that would attract more youths to farming.
Executive Director of the organisation, Mr. Obinna Chukwuezie told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that having more youths in agriculture was critical in ensuring increased productivity and attaining food sufficiency in the country.
He called for the adoption of strategic innovations and training for youths to boost the cultivation staple foods in the country.
According to him, getting more people in agriculture needs to be strategic because young people cannot do it the way their aging population did it in the past.
“Things that will attract young people must be something technologically driven, improved variety of crops so that the crops will be high yielding and early maturing.
“Young people like those kinds of innovations that will attract them more.
“Unfortunately, most of the young people prefer quick money like “yahoo yahoo’’ and the ones in the villages prefer to ride `okada’ or `keke’ than go into agriculture,’’ Chukwuezie said.
He expressed concern that the country is not replacing aging farmers who are quitting farming.
“Most of the active farming population are dying off and some getting incapacitated but we are not getting that same number of people replacing them.
“We can see that where 10 aged people are leaving the scene as active farmers, only one or two people are replacing them.
“And because they are not doing the farming, the land for agriculture is shrinking as they rather prefer to use it to build house or do some other thing.
“But the future is not bleak anyway; there is still hope because agriculture is in the concurrent list in Nigeria.
“So, if the Federal Government is doing it and all the states are involved in all of this, we will see that production will increase and we can attain food sufficiency and have lees need for importation,’’ Chukwuezie said. (NAN)