The Managing Director of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), Mr Cornelius Adebayo, has advocated for the clustering of smallholder farmers into mega farm estates as the most effective strategy to attract investment, secure funding, and counter climate change impacts. 

This policy position has been clarified because individual smallholders across Nigeria face major barriers to production, including a lack of official land titles, high costs of irrigation, and severe weather changes. 

Clustering farmers into government-backed estates provides a viable strategy for reducing food costs, enhancing security, and modernizing agricultural systems.

Adebayo shared these insights while speaking as a panellist at the Bank of Industry’s (BOI) Climate Resilience Knowledge Series in Lagos. 

The event focused on building sustainable livelihoods and inclusive growth for local businesses.

According to the NALDA boss, placing farmers into organised clusters is the foundational step that makes all other agricultural solutions possible, making it much easier for investors to fund large-scale infrastructure like irrigation trenches.

To solve the land title problem that prevents smallholders from getting bank loans, NALDA is rolling out the mega farm estate model. Under this plan, a single 10,000-hectare estate can host 2,000 smallholder farmers. 

The government secures the land title for the entire estate and provides an anchor aggregator to guarantee the financing that individual farmers need. 

NALDA confirmed that large areas of land are already being cleared and equipped with solar energy and processing spaces in Kwara, Benue, and Bauchi states.

Adebayo also pointed out that while northern Nigerian farmers face more severe climate problems than those in the south, poor land preparation remains the biggest obstacle to mechanised farming nationwide. 

He explained that although the federal government has ordered new tractors from Belarus to boost mechanisation, many lands still contain stumps and stones that destroy heavy machinery. 

He concluded that Nigeria’s mechanisation problem is caused by a failure to prepare farmland appropriately, rather than a lack of actual equipment.

Source: This Day Live
Image Credit: Southern Robin