Improving Agriculture for Nigerian Economic Development at Post COVID-19 Pandemic Era

A Theoretical Review

Abstract

Considering the importance of agriculture in providing food, fabrics, Cotton wool, leather, wood for construction and paper products- are all agricultural products to mention a few. This study is set to investigate ways of improving agriculture for Nigerian economic development at Post Covid-19 Pandemic Era. In recent past, Nigeria has been good at promoting agriculture for better economy until the covid-19 pandemic era. Covid-19 is a dangerous, very deadly disease that emanated from china and spread to all other parts of the world including Nigeria. During the period and in the attempt to curtail the spread of this disease, various governments across the globe including Nigeria placed eight months lock-down on all the nations’ activities including agriculture. However, during the period, agriculture was grossly neglected. People were not able to neither do robust farming nor harvest their crops let alone commercial marketing for survival due to so many restrictions. Farmers were terribly affected especially small scale farmers who had to eat up their seed crops, consumed their mega capital and were left with nothing to continue their agricultural occupation. This led to little or no investment going on in the country; our youths were supposedly jobless leading to hyperinflation and depletion of our exchange rate. Call to mind that agriculture offers about 86% of workforce in Nigeria, it then means that covid-19 impacted more job losses in Nigeria with its attendant worries like high crime rate of all sort. The authors examine the context, with a view to preferring ways of improving agriculture at post covid-19 pandemic era and relative to Economic development in Nigeria. This study concludes that since the main sustenance of the nation is agriculture, effort should be seriously geared towards improving agriculture through youth involvement in agricultural process among others. The implication of the study is that the federal government should revise its 1956 resolution which shifts attention to oil, by making a U turn shifting its attention and support to agriculture otherwise, sooner or later there will not be a country called Nigeria. Secondly, Government should invest in data systems at the local, state, national and global levels so that real time information can be made available for decision makers to help increase confidence in supply during crises; and finally, educational attainment of youth’s in agriculture should be increase as one of the means to improve the economy of Nigeria at post covid-19 pandemic era.