By Yemi Olakitan
Following the discovery that the poorest households in the nation solely engaged in subsistence agriculture, an expert and former Statistician-General and CEO of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Dr. Yemi Kale, has urged better farming methods in Nigeria.
He urged better agricultural practices on a wide scale, noting that subsistence agriculture could not be relied upon to produce enough food due to numerous problems with it, including its high sensitivity to climate change, labour-intensive nature, and severe lack of training in crucial areas.
“Agriculture is important to the transformation of the economy. As a result, urgent agricultural change must materialise in order to spur economic growth,” he said.
This can only be accomplished, he argued, if Nigeria effectively transitions its heavily subsistence-focused agricultural industry to sustainable and organised commercial farming.
Over 70% of Nigerians, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), work in agriculture, mostly for subsistence.
