Nigeria: StandUp Naija 2011

Nigerian presidential election will be held on 9 April 2011. What are the expectations of Nigerian voters? StandUp Naija is a series of impactful videos highlighting the expectations of average Nigerians and policy areas the 2011 elections should address. StandUp Naija is a project run by The Nigeria Leadership Initiative (NLI).

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3 comments

  • How about Mechanized farming, where every nigerian will have healthy and enough food. Lots of lands are lying wasted every area of the country.

  • Carlos

    Well mechanized farming and use of chemical fertilizers have 2 major issues. 1) The use of Large machinery causes soil compaction which will render land useless after a while, not to mention that they tend to rust over in the tropic 2) the chemical fertilizers will leach due to the methods preferred by modern farming, causing massive amounts of toxic waste.

    It would be more reasonable to take note of agricultural local practices, see how they influence and impact the land. There are things such as a closed system agriculture, for instance raised field agriculture where nutrients and food sources are layered to interact in a way that it speeds the nutrient recycling inherent in nation. Also soil engineering should be studied in depth, in Brazil (also a nation in the tropics) there what is termed “terra preta do indio”. It is disputed whether this is stacked ancient refuse or planned practice, but it is suggested, due to the roughly similar geographic occurrence of what appear to be ancient orchards, suggest it was planned. It uses a low fire slow cooked low oxygen coaling method using natural dry wood and earthen ovens. it is also interspersed with bits of pottery and organic refuse, the pottery aerates the soil and adds some minerals, the organic refuse adds nutrients and the slow cooked wood coal mixed in ensures that these all stay in the soil and do not become leeched out.
    Also there could be experimentation with crop rotations and mixed agriculture, as opposed to mono-agriculture. Unfortunately this is a very complex subject but to simply suggest that mechanized farming will ensure every Nigerian to healthy and sufficient food is a little naive. land needs to stay fallow for a small period to regenerate, but also to destroy the environment recklessly will not only waste resources it will accelerate the loss of resources, some locals simply cannot support certain types of agriculture. This is where things such as government policy come into play. economics tells us that we should grow almost solely produce of a certain crop if our environment is suited to it, for it is most efficient, the thing is it is being grown to sell on the market, if an American or European can pay more for it greater chance is that it’ll go to them. Then food is imported to make any national deficit, this is suppose to be economically efficient. however “economics” is done almost solely through abstract banking mathematics and use of unrestricted tender (paper money). You see, if you want to feed every Nigerian you should force your government to ensure every Nigerian is given at least a minimal amount of food before selling on the international market.
    you see somebody or some entity would have to co-ordinate everything because current land owners will not be too happy, as well as established agricultural producers. They would have to shift their policy. what could happen is a land re-appropriation where everyone unemployed, or homeless can be given a plot of land and instructed in the ways of reading the land and of mixed agriculture. also somebody would have to ensure the sites are in suitable pieces of land and that practices conform to each set that is most practical to the climate. Large flat grasslands is what modern agriculture deals with, but there is also mountain, jungle, floodplain, etc

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