A professor of agricultural economics, Uzochukwu Onyebinama, has called for a census of farmers to provide the basis for their identification, characterisation, and consequent inclusion as targets of agricultural interventions.

On Wednesday, while delivering the 63rd Inaugural Lecture at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia, Mr Onyebinama stated that a farmers’ census in Nigeria was imperative to ensure that agricultural development objectives were achieved.

The lecturer argued that current agricultural development policies primarily focused on a large number of rural dwellers, who were mainly farmers.

He said that development resulted in limited resources being spread too thinly with minimal impact.

“Farmer identification, characterisation and classification will provide the empirical evidence for the determination of the development needs of the target farmers. This will ensure that agricultural development programmes do not adopt a welfare approach which leads to a misapplication of limited resources, as is the case with smallholder credit schemes,” he said.

He stated that technological change should be promoted through the adoption and use of process technologies, given the subsistence orientation in Nigerian agriculture.

Mr Onyebinama contended that the emphasis on agricultural research relative to national needs should focus on the practices, methods, and techniques of production.

He urged the states to assume the responsibility to fund research on process technologies, while the cost of research on product technologies is borne by their manufacturers.

The lecturer advocated a hybrid approach that combines formal and non-formal education to enhance the technical and managerial skills of farmers.

According to him, the farmer practising subsistence agriculture in Nigeria is the entrepreneur, the manager, the taskmaster, and the task worker, deficient in technical and managerial competence.

Mr Onyebinama also called for a new land reform that would ensure security of tenure for farmers.

He stated that the indigenous land tenure system, preceding the land use decree (1978), hindered agricultural development by not guaranteeing the security of tenure for farmers.

Mr Onyebinama further said, “While freedom from hunger is realistic and attainable, zero hunger or an end to hunger is overambitious and unachievable, not just by 2030, but going forward, a mirage.”

He recommended that investments in agriculture would not just drive the transformation of food systems but were also critical to the “quest for freedom from hunger”.

In his remark, the vice-chancellor of MOUAU, Maduebibisi Iwe, congratulated Mr Onyebinama, saying, “You have come up, declared your knowledge from the scientific point of view, and we are happy about it.”

Mr. Iwe, whose tenure had witnessed a series of inaugural lectures, said that the reason was to provide opportunities for many professors who were emerging.

“We still have a lot of people who should have given their lectures by now, but you cannot create time when there is no time. We are doing everything to bridge the gap so that in the future there will not be excess again,” he said.

(NAN)