Agriculture remains the dominant sector in the rural areas of Nigeria. It provides employment for about 60% of the work force. The diversity of climatic conditions, the richness of soil types and water sources, and the high population density provide great potentials for crop, animal, fish, and tree production. In the 1960s and up to the early 1970s, Nigeria's agriculture flourished. The country was one of the world's highest producers of palm oil, cocoa, and groundnut. Over time, agriculture has declined in importance.

However, there are many signs that agriculture is regaining its past glorious importance. The country is now the largest producer of cassava roots and yam tubers; livestock and soybean production is among the largest in Africa. The share of agriculture in real GDP has been increasing since 1996 and the annual growth of the sector has surpassed population growth in recent years. More importantly, the agricultural sector is receiving the expected attention from policy makers, which is manifested in several new presidential initiatives, e. g., for cassava and for rice. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) salutes these new developments and is glad to contribute to the evolution in the agricultural sector in Nigeria, and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

Agriculture in Nigeria is a major branch of the economy in Nigeria, providing employment for 70% of the population. One of the poorest countries in the world, but provide many imports for countries around the world. The sector is being transformed by commercialization at the small, medium and large-scale enterprise levels. In 1990, 82 million hectares out of Nigeria's total land area of about 91 million hectares were found to be arable. 42 percent of the cultivable area was farmed. Much of this land was farmed under the bush fallow system, whereby land is left idle for a period of time to allow natural regeneration of soil fertility. 18 million hectares were classified as permanent pasture, but had the potential to support crops. Most of the 20 million hectares covered by forests and woodlands are believed to have agricultural potential.

Agricultural holdings are small and scattered, and farming is carried out with simple tools. Large-scale agriculture is not common. Agriculture contributed 32% to GDP in 2010. Major crops include beans, sesame, cashew nuts, cassava, cocoa beans, groundnuts, gum arabic, kolanut, maize (corn), melon, millet, palm kernels, palm oil, plantains, rice, rubber, sorghum, soybeans and yams. However the potential yield is less than actual yield, the yield gap is very high (Table1).

Picture 1. Economic activity in Nigeria

Sources: world Bank 2014

Table 1 Yield gaps of selected commodities. (2010/14)

Key: NC = Northcentral; NE = Northeast; NW = Northwest; SE = Southeast; SS = Southsouth; SW = Southwest. (2014). Source: Federal livestock department. (2011).

However farming in Nigeria is highly risky. Droughts and epizooty can cause essential damage to a rural producer. In order to risks of agrobusiness in Nigeria business, the state took measures for adoption of the laws promoting development of low-risk agrarian production.

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) is a new innovative mechanism targeted at de-risking lending to the agricultural sector, is designed to provide the singular transformational and one bullet solution to break the seeming jinx in Nigeria's agricultural lending and development. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in August 2010, engaged the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to develop the NIRSAL.

NIRSAL is an approach that tackles both the agricultural value chains and the agricultural financing value chain. The goal of NIRSAL is to trigger an agricultural industrialization process through increased production and processing of the greater part of what is produced to boost economic earnings across the value chain.

Besides the markets for agricultural commodities would be strengthened through the establishment of commodity marketing corporations around each of the commodities under the Agricultural Transformation Agenda.

The Federal Government will support the development of private sector driven-marketing organizations to grow the agricultural sector. The scrapping of marketing boards during the implementation of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) without any institutions to replace them or play their roles left millions of farmers in a precarious situation making access to market a very serious challenge. One of the effects of this has been price uncertainties and volatilities which left farmers at the mercy of middle-men.

These marketing institutions would be owned by agricultural value-chains and run as private sector led, but government enabled institutions to empower farmers and the value chain actors to generate value. These new institutions, which would be called, marketing corporations, will coordinate production and export of target commodities. They will also attract investment into the sector from Research and Development to infrastructure and processing. They will stimulate the development of tailored financial services to grow the sector.

Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) represents a policy and pragmatic shift within the existing Fertilizer Market Stabilization Programme and it puts the resource constrained farmer at its center through the provision of series of incentives to encourage the critical actors in the fertilizer value chain to work together to improve productivity, household food security and income of the farmer.

Goals of GESS are:

• Target 5 million farmers in each year for 4 years that will receive GESS in their mobile phone directly totaling 20 million at the end of 4 years.

• To provide support directly to farmers to enable them procure agricultural inputs at affordable prices, at the right time and place.

• To increase productivity of farmers across the length and breadth of the country through increased use of fertilizer i. e.50kg/ha from 13kg/ha.

• Change the role of Government from direct procurement and distribution of fertilizer to a facilitator of procurement, regulator of fertilizer quality and catalyst of active private sector participation in the fertilizer value chain

Thus today the programs directed on infrastructure improvement, creation of jobs and shared wealth in rural areas develop in agrarian and industrial complex of Nigeria. There's an Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Program Phase 1 (ATASP-1) among them.

The expected impact of this program is to contribute to the private sector-led agricultural growth for food security. Its specific objective is to increase, on a sustainable basis, the income of smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs that are engaged in the production, processing, storage and marketing of the priority commodity value chains. ATASP-1 aims to improve agricultural production and productivity. To achieve this, the Program will comprise the following components in Table 2:

Table 2 The Components of ATASP-1

Source: Nigeria ATASP-1 - SESA Summary 2013

ATASP-1 will be implemented in four Staple Crops Processing Zones (SCPZs) of AdaniOmor, Bida-Badeggi, Kano-Jigawa, Kebbi-Sokoto and cover 21 LGAs in seven States: Anambra (Ogbaru and Orumba North LGAs), Enugu (Uzo Uwani LGA); Jigawa (Hadejia LGA); Kano (Bunkure, Kura and Rano LGAs); Kebbi (Argungu, Bagudo, Birnin Kebbi, Dandi, Ngaski, Shanga and Suru LGAs); Niger (Agaie, Gbako, Lapai, Lavun, Katcha and Mokwa LGAs); and Sokoto (Kware LGA). The Processing Zones are specially delimited contiguous expanses of land in areas of high agricultural production and potential where the localized provision of a well-developed physical infrastructure such as access roads and energy, as well as water, are necessities to support production, processing and marketing activities for selected commodities.

There are factors constraining agricultural performance

10. World Bank 2014. http://www.worldbank.org/ng

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10. World Bank 2014. http://www.worldbank.org/ng

Рецензент: Рыбакова Ольга Викторовна, доктор экономических наук, профессор кафедры экономики и финансов общественного сектора Российской академии народного хозяйства и государственной службы при Президенте РФ.