Farming is like Mother Nature, is in everyone

Farming is an inborn thing for a standard African man, or a Nigerian, to be precise. There is a refrain or a common say in the Western part of Nigeria (among the Yoruba) which says: “Farming is the profession of our land/ anyone who refuses to work will steal/ education without hoe or cutlass/ is not complete, no, not complete.” As these lyrics pray, the cutlass and the hoe inspire writing material in education terms. Nigerian education system is segmented in 3 levels: primary, secondary and tertiary. At every stage you will definitely see Agricultural Science in the curriculum as a subject, simply because it is the “profession of our land” which we all cherish and adore.

By the 21^st of June, I will be 28 years old. However, I still can remember vividly my primary school experience when we were being taught on how to make use of cutlass to scrape away unwanted weeds and hinder the growth of crops, as well as on how to work with the hoe to put soil in good shape in order to germinate the seeds. Unlike the primary school that lasts 6 years, secondary school education system in Nigeria is 3 years long. During this time, all the students take general subjects with Agricultural Science included. Afterwards, there comes the 3 years-long senior level, which is often segmented in 4 categories which are: Science, Commerce, Arts and Social Sciences.

Nigeria or the largest cocoa and timber producer worldwide

The amazing thing is that there is no course or stage you will go through in Nigerian secondary education system for which you will not learn a thing or more about agriculture and farming. Before crude oil (hydrocarbons) was discovered in Nigeria at Oloibiri, in the Niger Delta, in 1956 by the Shell Oil, our major income source was farming. In fact, we were one of the largest producers of cocoa and timber in Africa if not the largest producer in the world back then.

Major projects like the construction of roads, bridges on the Atlantic Ocean, skyscrapers, or the first television station ever built in Africa–NTA (National Television Authority), were all built from the profit generated from farming. Most of these above mentioned amenities and infrastructures are still there while the newly ones do not stand the test of time. Sometimes I wonder if the crude oil’s discovery in Nigeria is a blessing or a curse, but that’s another story.

Let’s embrace agriculture!

Nowadays, professionals at the peak of their careers or even retired people in different sectors still come back to farming. Therefore, I would like to encourage the young generation not to see farming as the work of elderly people, but as a goldmine still very crude that needs to be explored and refined. Agriculture is actually a way of life in Africa as well as the means of livelihood for the majority, so the youth should engage more in it by working hard so that no person in the African continent will die of hunger and malnutrition. 

Picture credit: Wooden boads, by Craig Elliot.