Why Agriculture Still Feels So Hard for Young Nigerians to Take Seriously
I greet o, and Happy Easter...
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately...
Nigeria used to have real pride in agriculture. Then oil took over so much of our attention, and somewhere along the line farming started to feel invisible... even though so many people are still doing the work.
I don’t think young people are rejecting agriculture because it has no future. I think many are rejecting a sector that still feels too low-status, too uncertain, and too hard to navigate from the outside.
There are real farms and real agri businesses doing serious work... but a lot of it stays hidden in small circles. So it becomes hard to know who is consistent, who is growing, and where support should even go.
That’s part of what I’ve been trying to build through https://farms.ng
The goal is to make farms and agri businesses more visible, and also to create a place where useful farming knowledge does not just disappear. If people can learn from what others have already tried, they can make fewer mistakes and move with more confidence.
We’ve also built Zaam to help guide farmers using actual Nigerian agricultural data. It still needs refining, but the more real knowledge and field experience we can gather, the better and more useful it becomes over time.
I really believe agriculture starts to look more serious again when real people doing the work can be seen, understood, and learned from.
Anyway... this is partly me thinking out loud, and partly a call for thoughtful people.
If this resonates and you’d like to help in any way, send me a DM. Writing, research, verifying businesses, data annotation, sharing ideas, or even just pushing back on the idea is welcome.