CO-ORDINATION BETWEEN AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE AND THE EXTENSION SERVICE IN IMO STATE

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE PROBLEM
Agriculture used to be the power house of 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
pre-eminent role in the economy ended in the late
sixties. Today, agriculture is in a comatose ctate,
severely afflicted by problems caused by years of neglect,
contradictory and ill-thoughtout government policies which
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 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 almost 50 per cent
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 of
food items paint a sad picture of the serious condition
in which agriculture is currently mired.
In the fifties and early sixties, Nigeria occupied
a relatively high position in the production and export
of many cash crops. That was when the famous groundnut
pyramids of Kano and sacks of cocoa and rubber graced
postcards and postage stamps. During that period,
Nigeria produced annually more than 240,000 tonnes of
palm oil and palm produce which represented 21 per cent
of t.otal world output (Newswatch, July 29, 1985). But
Malaysia, which sent some of its experts to the Nigerian
Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) near Benin in the
seventies to learn the techniques of modern palm oil
production and processing, is now the world1 s leading
producer, and a sizeable proportion of Nigeriaf s imports
of vegetable oil comes from there.
Also, Nigeria was a leading world producer and
exporter of cocoa and groundnuts. The Kano pyramids
have since disappeared, while cocoa product ion for which
the Cocoa House, Ibadan, was built as a celebrity
monument, has almost disappeared.
As in the past, agriculture is still the largest
employer of labour in the country. About 70 per cent of
total annual output in agriculture is produced by millions
of rural farmers who farm an average of one hectare, mostly
to provide subsistence for their families with very
little surplus for sale. This small-scale, crude tools
and low-income structure, coupled with its small marketable
surpluses of crops, faces serious entrepreneurial and
organisational problems. These problems are made more
serious by environmental 1 imitations and untapped potent ialities (climate, soil, water resources and technical
f acilities) in agricultural production (Olayide, et al,
1971).