Challenges and Prospects of Agriculture in Nigeria: The Way Forward

Abstract

Over the past three decades, Nigerian government had initiated a plethora of policies and programmes which were aimed at restoring agricultural sector to its pride of place in the economy. However various efforts at promoting investment and export diversification in the agricultural sector have not yielded appreciable dividend.  Enormous investment and export diversification potentials for generating higher growth in the economy have remained unlocked and unexploited in the agriculture due to a host of constraining factors that must be removed.  Therefore, the paper identified the constraints and proffered policy prescriptions to be implemented to remove them so as to fast track the attainment of poverty reduction and rapid economic development in the country. The identified constraints included marketing problem, infrastructure inadequacies, and unstable input and output prices. Policy actions for removing the constraints must include improvement in downstream commodity activities, environmental management, increased funding and efficiency in agricultural spending. Government must invest heavily in rural infrastructure and such investment must ensure development of infrastructure in the rural area.

Keywords: constraints, prospects, agriculture, development, investment.