A friend of mine in Europe recently posted the poser at me on twitter and while I thought the question was absurd, I reckoned it was not polite to give him such a sharp reply. Rather, I asked him to visit the country more often. That sounded soft enough.
Well, I didn't intend this to be a piece on how I chastised an Ondo-born Belgian who has not been to town in ten years.
But it pains me to think that at this age and time, I should still be offended by such a direct question.
That question would not have irritated me so,
if a large number of Nigerian farmers actually practised modern farming,
if the government was ashamed of paying such impudent lip service at this critical sector of the economy,
if most part of our arable land was commercially farmed,
if fertilisers and pesticides were within the reach of the average grower, and
if the best practices and methods were employed in the production of food crops and meat.
I am pissed because Nigeria is not just ready for organic farming, we have refused to out-grow it.
While in Europe, only a tiny fraction of farm produce come from organic farmers, the reverse is the case in Nigeria. That means the majority of our agriculture come from organic sources.
That is crude.
We have largely stuck to the farming practices our grand-fathers popularised some 200 years ago. It's a miracle and evidence of the hardwork of local farmers that we've been able to record any significant yield in this manner.
Genius Nigerian farmers still mostly
use animal manure on their farms,
feed catfish with worms and dead animal meat,
feed fowls raw maize,
use scarecrows to chase birds on ricefarms,
and the likes.
This is absolutely not the time to preach more organic farming to Nigerian farmers who are actually the inventors and loyalists of this noble method.
This is the time to aggressively support modern, inorganic farming that will bring more yields and profits to farmers.
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