- Not only does agriculture feed and clothe us all, but it accounts for roughly 21.97 percent of the Nigerian economy.
- No economy can achieve the desired economic growth without a solid Agriculture policy.
- Without farmers, there will be no cultivation of farm lands for the production of food for consumption.
We in Nairametrics believe the key to spurring growth in agriculture in Africa’s largest economy is protecting farmers against perils associated with their business.
The key to doing that is for Insurance companies to as matter of expediency to sell the CROP INSURANCE policy to farmers as a way of protecting them against the inevitable loss by nature.
- Crop insurance is purchased by agricultural producers, including farmers, ranchers, and others to protect themselves against either the loss of their crops due to natural disasters, such as hail, drought, and floods, or the loss of revenue due to declines in the prices of agricultural commodities.
- Nigeria farmers have over the years had their farm lands destroyed by heavy rains and floods. In 1988, in Bagauda town in Kano, a North West city, the collapse of a dam destroyed farmlands and left 182 people dead.
Nigeria lags behind South Africa India and Turkey in Crop Insurance penetration.
- While Nigeria is setting up a national crop insurance to cover 10 million farmer this year as a result of the flooding that destroyed crops in 2012, the product has a method of risk management or risk transfer has already been in use in South Africa for almost a century.
- In short, as far as global ranking for crop insurance penetration is concerned, Nigeria was nowhere to be found on the chart that consists of 20 countries.
- The last survey of 2012 showed South Africa ranking 10th with (33%) penetration, India ranked 13 with 20 percent penetration and Turkey 17th with 5 percent penetration.
- In 2014, nearly 30 million farmers were covered under the India crop insurance scheme.
- This compares with Nigeria where only 5 percent of farmers have access to agric insurance. This is because over the years, the country has no reliable statistics to capture the exact number of farmers under the insurance cover.
Conclusions
- The incoming minister of agriculture should pursue fervently the crop insurance policy formulated by the former minister Akinwunmi Adesina. This is because oil price which accounts for 2/3 of government revenue and 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings has dipped by over 50 percent. This means the country has no option than to fall back on agriculture as a major revenue income and foreign exchange earner as it was in the 60s.
