The Minister of National Planning, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman on Tuesday recounted the evolution of Nigeria’s involvement in agricultural endeavours and implementing policies since the 1860’s.

He began by recounting Nigeria’s minimal involvement in the agricultural sector from  1860-1950’s saying “only adhoc attention was paid to agriculture” but noted by the 1950’s and 60’s “we attempted the diversification, research and extend services, strong intervention to boost domestic production, especially of cash crops” adding that it was “targeted at the export market”.

During that period, Nigeria became the largest producer of rubber, groundnuts, palm oil and the second largest producer of cocoa among others.

He further said Nigeria renewed its focus on livestock and fisheries saying that “the first national development plan had a very strong focus on agriculture”.

In the 1970’s and 80’s, he said the petroleum revenue came in and with the lack of attention to agriculture “we started to decline in policy support and public funding for agriculture, strong decline in domestic production and rising level of dependence on agricultural imports”.

He further alleged that the “marketing boards were used as taxation instruments to finance development, which was a disincentive itself to agricultural development”.

He noted that agriculture used to be treated as a regional or state issue until the birth of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The ministry was created to address “some of the emerging issues”.

He thanked the World Bank for the little impact their policies have made on the Nigerian agricultural sector “I think the World Bank has been criticised a lot, for a lot of the things they have done. But certainly their role in agricultural development has been lightly positive”.

He listed the FADAMA Project as one of such policies that has recorded “resounding success” in the country.

Still harping on the involvement of the country in agricultural policies in the 1970’s and 80’s, he said “we tried to boost production through subsidized inputs, community developments and subsidized credits”.

He listed the creation of the National Food Accelerated Programme in 1972, the Nigerian Agricultural Bank in 1973, which has metamorphosed into the Bank of Agriculture. The creation of the River Basin Development Authorities in 1976 and the Green Revolution which took place in 1979-1983 was also mentioned by the minister.

He also mentioned the establishment of Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFFRI).

He then went on to the third phase; 1990-to date.

The Kano state born minister said during this phase, agriculture was ” identified in almost all our development plans, both in medium and long terms as a critical sector” adding that there were about seven new presidential initiatives in 1999 on cassava, rice, and sugar.

He also listed the National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS) document, late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s 7-Point Agenda, The Vision 2020 and the Transformation Agenda as agricultural programmes that the country has embarked upon.

He however noted that to complicate matters “there are also some external considerations, preferential agreement in the World Trade Organistion (WTO), which tends to pretend as if free trade is something that everybody does, when in fact all the developed countries heavily subsidise all  their agricultural sector”.

He also tried to compare the cases of India, Brazil, China, countries that, according to him, have gone through the same agricultural processes Nigeria has gone through, even long before Nigeria did.

He noted that “Brazil have been trying to get it right since the early 1900’s, China was trying to get it right from about 500 B.C. and they failed many times, including the famous famine that arose because of the poor agricultural policies”.