Agriculture in Nigeria is a branch of the economy in Nigeria, providing employment for about 35% of the population as of 2020.[1] As reported by the FAO,[2] agriculture remains the foundation of the Nigerian economy, despite the presence of oil in the country. It is the main source of livelihood for most Nigerians. The Agricultural sector is made up of four sub-sectors: Crop Production, Livestock, Forestry and Fishing.
Nigeria has a total agricultural area of 70.8m hectares. This is distributed among arable land area of 34 million hectares, 6.5 million hectares for permanent crops, and 30.3 million hectares on meadows and pastures. Maize, cassava, guinea corn and yam are the major crops among households in Nigeria and 70 percent of households practice crop farming. In the south south, Nigeria, 7.3 percent of households practice fishing, While 69.3 percent of households own or raise livestock in north West, Nigeria.[3]
In the third quarter of 2019, the sector grew by 14.88% year-on-year in nominal terms with a decline of 3.44% points from the third quarter of 2018. The largest driver of the sector remains Crop Production as it accounts for 91.6% of the sector in the third quarter of 2019 with a quarterly growth which stood at 44.12%. The Agriculture sector contributed 29.25% to overall real GDP during the third quarter of 2019.[4]
The sector is being transformed by commercialization at the small, medium and large-scale enterprise levels.[5] On the other hand, the Nigerian Agricultural sector has encountered several challenges ranging from an obsolete land tenure system that limits access to land (1.8 ha/farming household), a very low level of irrigation development (less than 1 percent of cropped land under irrigation), limited adoption of research findings and technologies, high cost of farm inputs, poor access to credit due to the mismanagement of specialized institutions established for the development of agricultural sector and lack of collateral security by the farmers, inefficient fertilizer procurement and distribution, insufficient storage facilities and poor access to markets and more recently, changes in average temperatures, rainfall, climate extremes and infestation of pests and diseases causing organisms precipitated by climate change pose great challenge to agriculture.[6] This is coupled with a high dependence on rainfed agriculture which has made the Agricultural Production System highly vulnerable to adverse seasonal variations.[7] These have all contributed to low agricultural productivity (average of 1.2 metric tons of cereals/ha) with high postharvest losses and waste in Nigeria.[2]