Poor rural infrastructure holds back food production by small Nigerian farmers

Agriculture is an important part of development and poverty mitigation in low income countries. It depends on infrastructure such as good roads, safe drinking water, adequate power supply, a market network, modern communication services and facilities for processing and storing farm harvests.

But inadequate and unreliable infrastructure services are common in rural communities in Africa. Nigeria is no different. Its rural population faces a range of difficulties that hinder agricultural productivity. They include environmental hazards, technological constraints, rising production costs, inadequate agricultural incentives and lack of sustainable rural development programmes.

To show how various factors affect farming in Nigeria, we had a closer look at some rural communities in Ogun State.

Our research investigated the impact of rural infrastructure on production efficiency of food crop farmers. We found that better infrastructure translates into better food production. Other factors like farm size, labour and cost of planting materials also influenced crop output, but to a lesser extent. Therefore, for Nigeria to feed its growing population efficiently, investment in rural infrastructure will be necessary to strengthen the food system.

What did we do?

In this study, we interviewed 160 farming households from 20 communities in Ogun State…

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From The Conversation - 24/02/2021