2018 farming: Nigeria’s agricultural performance improves in 8 areas –JSR report

The Joint Sector Review (JSR) has said that Nigeria’s agricultural sector showed eight institutional performance improvement in the Comprehensive African Agricultural Rural Development Programme (CAADP) in 2018.

The JSR made this known during its presentation recently in Abuja at the national workshop on agricultural joint sector review, biennial review report and the second National Agricultural Investment Plan (NAIP).

The JSR workshop anchored by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) with six critical stakeholders, showed that the agricultural sector recorded improvement in CAADP. The areas cited by the JSR include policies, support institutions and human resource, people engaged in agriculture and access to financial services, inclusive institutionalised mechanisms for mutual accountability and peer review.

The review also listed public agriculture expenditure as a share of total public expenditure, annual growth of agriculture output and increase of agricultural value added per arable land. The eight improved performance was the increase of supplied quality agriculture inputs to the total inputs requirements for agriculture commodities.

The JSR process facilitates the NAIP and the Biennial Review Report for (BRR) Nigerian agriculture. The performance review was aided by targets specified in the frameworks of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), the Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP), and CAADP.

In terms of funding, the review said that agriculture’s contribution to GDP at 24 per cent was still at a remarkable level. It stressed that the remarkable level was only obtainable if the rising impact of the communications, services and entertainment sectors in the economy was considered.

The JSR review said that access to land was still limited, as the use of free land was low even for farmers to obtain documentation, which allows them to use farmland for collateral. Also on production factors, inputs and services, the review said that the usage of purchased seeds at less than 30 per cent was yet to meet the expectation of the Agricultural Promotion Strategy (APS), stating that local fertiliser production increased in 2018,  with percentage of farmlands using fertiliser also improving while fertiliser usage was still below recommended target.

The review said that agricultural production performance was generally below target, noting that individual agricultural production, prices and trade, had risen considerably over years.

However, the JSR made recommendations, which include realigning fiscal and monetary policies in annual medium term revenue/expenditure framework to encourage agriculture’s access to credit, and increasing the share of commercial banks’ loans to agriculture. It said that institutional linkage should be strengthened to promote agricultural export along ecological comparative advantage, standardisation and quality assurance measure for the production of exportable agricultural commodities.