President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has a big task up his sleeves. Beyond, his health challenges, he has the onerous task of convincing Nigerians to go back to their root, which is agriculture. He has to impress on the ministries and agencies in charge of agriculture to come up with new policies and programmes that would encourage Nigerians to go back to basis.

This should be the New Year resolutions of the federal government under President Yar'Adua. This has become, not only necessary, but very urgent, considering the effect of the global recession on the nation's economy. The recession affected every part of the nation's economy, from banking to stock market and down to the much-depend ended oil sector.

For the first time in any years running, the once-viable stock market crashed, thus increasing the blood pressure of many Nigerians, who invested their life savings in the sector. And so, to stem the tide of this global monster, both operators in private and public sectors of the nation's economy had severally called on the federal government to increase the budgetary allocations of the agriculture sector to ensure improved agricultural produce. They had also argued that long before the advent of oil, Nigerian government was able to execute investment projects through earnings from agriculture produce.

For instance, between 1940 and 1950, Nigeria's agricultural export commodities contributed over 75 per cent of the total annual merchandised export. During this period, agricultural products dominated Nigeria's non-oil export trade. It accounted for over 65 per cent of the no-oil export. Agricultural export commodities such as cocoa, rubber, cotton, palm oil, palm kernel, groundnut and coffee played prominent roles in the economic development by providing the needed foreign exchange for capital development projects.

Thus, the export commodities constituted the main export trade basket of the colonial period. Nevertheless, the introduction of petroleum into the nation's export trade changed the composition and structure of the export trade. The oil sector, which initially contributed modestly to the economy in the 1960's became more important in the 1970's and it is now overwhelmingly important to the point of the economy becoming over-dependent on it, providing about 95 per cent of the foreign exchange earnings as well as 65 per cent of budgetary revenues.

Successive governments have over the decades initiated numerous policies and programmes aimed at restoring the agricultural sector to its pride of place in the nation's economy. Various efforts at promoting investments and export diversifications in agricultural sector have not yielded appreciable dividends. The relative share of the agricultural sector in foreign exchange earnings have declined from an average of 11 per cent in 1970 to 1975 sub-period. The efforts to reverse the trend seem to be yielding limited results as oil continues to dominate the country's export while agricultural export share of Nigeria's total export remained under 5 per cent for most years since the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme.

In spite of enormous efforts by the government to reposition agriculture to its prime of place of providing food for human consumption and raw materials for the industrial needs as well as generating foreign exchange earnings and employment for the population. The rate of capacity utilization by agro-allied industry in the country has been declining, partly because of irregular and inadequate supply of raw materials. Linkage of agricultural sector to the industry has been very weak. It is imperative for the country to maintain equilibrium between raw materials requirements of industries, human consumption needs and agricultural capacity to supply them.

The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy have emphasized the need for a country to reduce over-dependence on export of petroleum products from its foreign exchange earnings. The emphasize was due to the fact that petroleum is a non-renewable product. In order to broaden the sources of foreign exchange earnings, it is necessary to diversify from the petroleum products into products such as agricultural export products.

From the perspective and sustainable agricultural growths and developments in Nigeria, one of the fundamental constraints is the peasant nature of the production system with its low productivity, poor response to technology adoption strategies and poor returns on investments. It is recognized that agricultural commercialization and investments are the key strategies for promoting accelerated modernization, sustainable growth and development hence, the poverty reduction in the sector.

However, to attract investment into agriculture, it is imperative that those constraints inhibit the performance of the sector are first identified with a view to unlocking them and creating a conducive investment climate in the sector. The development challenges of Nigeria's agriculture are therefore those of properly identifying and classifying the growth and development constraints of the sector, unlocking them and then evolving appropriate strategies for promoting accelerated commercialization and investments in the sector such that in the final analysis, agriculture will become one of the most important growth points in the economy.

Generally, agricultural products have been recognised to have domestic food and industrial value and great export potentials because they can provide foods for the entire population and income to farmers as well as many economic agents involved in marketing of agricultural products. They serve as major source of raw materials for industry as well as major source of non-oil foreign exchange earnings for the nation. Significant growth potentials in agricultural products can be exploited.

The potentials include generating growth in export earnings through increased cultivation of crops, generating increased income for labour and entrepreneurs, who are engaged in small scale industries as well as large scale agro-based industries that make use of agricultural products as raw materials. In addition, the manufacture of food items like vegetable oil and fats, majority of which are currently imported can be obtained from industrial processing of agricultural commodities.

Opportunities also exist to substitute tradition grains with cassava in agro-industry, instead of wheat. In view of the investments and export diversification potentials of agricultural commodities that have not been fully exploited, some questions may be asked, what are the constraints to agricultural developments in Nigeria? What policy strategies should be implemented to improve performance of agriculture, thus the assessment of the problems and the prospects of agriculture in Nigeria with a view to providing policy recommendations to accelerate performance of agriculture?

Development challenges in Nigeria's agriculture, identification of the development constraints in the agricultural sector, which is a necessary step to unlocking the factors inhibiting the performance of the sector as well as evolving policy strategies that would create conducive climate for promoting accelerated commercialization and growth of the sector.

In this connection, the following factors are very important. Marketing involves getting the agricultural products from farmers to the consumers. It helps to enlarge production by stimulating consumption, expanding the agro-industry and facilitating industrial growth. For the marketing to play an essential role in increasing agricultural production, the following five basic elements are necessary.

Regrettably, the state of development of market information in the country is still primitive. Improved storage techniques that have been developed by relevant research institute have remained un-adopted and sometimes unknown to farmers. Heavy post harvest losses occur due to inadequate storage facilities, especially in times of bumper harvests.

The lack of adequate storage and processing facilities accounts for divergence between national food security and household food security. Even if the total production of food seems inadequate in the aggregate level, it will not lead to significant improvement in food security unless the food is available for consumption at the right time and in the right form. Whereas food must be consumed on a daily basis, production has a different specific time profile. Storage and processing are critical in ensuring that the commodities produced at a particular period are available for consumption whenever and wherever they are required.

A significant quantity of products harvested in Nigeria perishes due to lack of storage and processing facilities. Simple, efficient and cost effective technologies for perishables such as roots, tubers, fruits and vegetables are not as highly developed in the country compared to the storage technologies for the cereal grains and legumes. Consequently, post-harvest food storage losses are very high, approximately 40 per cent for perishables, compared to cereal grains and pulses at about 15%.

Traditional storage facilities have certain deficiencies, including rodents and termites attack, structures that are not moisture-proof, and inadequate loading and unloading facilities. Across geo-ecological zones, most farmers store only a portion of their crops for consumption. They sell part of their crop early to get cash to pay for their immediate financial obligations, including, in some instances, repaying the production loan to the middlemen.

Transportation and Distribution: The deplorable conditions of the transportation and distribution systems in the country constitute a major impediment in the value chains of many agricultural commodities. The collapse of railway system and underdevelopment of water transportation have put unbearable pressure on the road system, which is currently the only surviving mode of transportation.

The various types of roads in the country (highways, express roads, feeder roads, urban and rural roads) are in a bad condition and in need of significant repair, rehabilitation or reconstruction. In many rural areas, only footpaths are available. Consequently, transport of products to the markets is time consuming, expensive and sometimes virtually impossible. In view of the poor road conditions, perishable farm products are at risk of spoiling or at least losing quality before they are sold in the desired market place.

Access to modern farm inputs is also constrained by poor transport facility. Low level of Agricultural Investment: The low level of investment in the agricultural sector over the years mirrors the neglect of peasant agriculture. Both public and private agricultural investments failed to attract the desired priority. Public investment in agriculture has been failing for years. For instance, government commitment to agricultural funding has been very weak over the years and became more precarious after SAP. The share of agriculture in government spending was 1.9 per cent during the boom period 1972-1980, 3.0 percent during the crisis period 1981-1987 and 1.1 percent after structural adjustment 1988-1992.