Agro Allied Firm Makes Case For Functional Irrigation

The Chairman of Price
Well Agrexk Consultant Limited, Prof Ademola Oladele, has said that lack of functional irrigation in the country is hampering the 2015 mid-season farming in the country.
Oladele, a professor of Agricultural Extension at the University of Ibadan made the observation in an interview with The Tide source in Lagos recently.
He said that Nigeria could no longer depend on rain-fed agriculture considering the issues surrounding the climate.
He pointed out that climate change was a reality and is already taking a toll on the country.
According to him, the issue in most parts of the country now was lack of rain even as he said the mid-season farming could not commence because over time, “we have dependent on rain-fed agriculture”.
“If there are irrigation facilities and they make it available to farmers to use, then farmers will be able to adopt a food technology that will make them to improve their productivity.
“If care is not taken, we will end up being a food importer country because facilities and infrastructure are very key to what government should do to develop agriculture”, he said.
The professor said that in spite of years of alerting us about climate change, Nigeria had not taken any right action to combating the challenge.
He revealed that irrigation farming is not originally typical to the northern part of Nigeria because it was established in both the North and the South.
“If we go down memory lane, there were lots of river basins established in Nigeria both in the North and the South but what happened basically is that North was able to realistically cash on that advantage because they have longer dry season”, he said.
According to him, the South could not sustain the water basin authorities because they thought that they (south) do not need much of what the river basins were providing and rather saw these facilities as not beneficial to farmers but considered them wastage of resources.
Oladele further told The Tide source that it was time the country needed to go back to the drawing board to ensure that irrigation facilities in the southern parts of the country were revamped and sustained.