CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION1.1 THE PROBLEM

Agriculture used to be the powerhouse of the Nigerian economy, providing more than 85 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings and abundant and cheap food for the people. That was in the distant past as its eminent role in the economy ended in the late sixties. Today, agriculture is in a comatose state, severely afflicted by problems caused by years of neglect, contradictory and ill-thoughtout government policies that lack consistency. Lately, drought which is laying waste most of the farm land in the northern part of the country has added to the country’s agricultural problems (Newswatch, July 29, 1985). The steady decline in the productivity of agriculture, especially in the seventies, has had a tremendous impact on the whole economy which became a captive of imports fuelled by the billions of naira earned annually through crude oil exports. Nigeria became so import-crazy, thanks to oil, that by 1980, the import bill for food and raw materials added up to more than W1.5 billion annually (Aribisalla, 1981). But then, the bottom eventually fell out of the global oil market when the country’s oil export earnings was cut by almost two-thirds by a coribiration of tumbling prices and an almost 50 percent reduction in petroleum export. Since 1982, factories dependent on imported raw materials have shut down, making hundreds of workers jobless, while food prices continue to make quantum leaps upward (Newswatch, July 29, 1985). Prices offood items paint a sad picture of the serious condition n which agriculture is currently mired.

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