Measuring the Performance of the Agriculture Sector in Nigeria

Simon Kuznets and other pioneers in the field of National Accounting never perceived that Gross National Products possibly will or have onus to serve as a measure of economic development or social welfare. Yet real per capita Gross Domestic Products is frequently used as a measure of relative living standards.

It is in line with the above that we shall be taking out time to discuss the relationship between Economic Development, Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) before finally proceeding to reviewing the performance of the agricultural sector in Nigeria in this article.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can be defined as the total monetary value of goods and services produced in a country measured for a specified period time (usually annually). A noted attempt at testing whether Gross Domestic Products adequately serves as a comprehensive indicator of general well-being was the Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW) developed and concluded in early 1970‘s by two Yale economists, Nordhaus and Tobin

 The authors concluded after observation was made based on a time period of 1929-1965 in the United States that there was sufficient positive correlation between MEW and GDP and therefore making the latter a reasonable macro-barometer for measuring changes in economic sustainability and welfare.

Concerns about sustainable economic development have more recently centered on the concept of ―green accounting, by extending Gross Domestic Product to include environmental and resource accounts. Development of social indicators aimed at measuring ―quality of life on the other hand spread rapidly among all industrialized nations and international organization such as United Nation and OECD in the late 1960‘s and 1970‘s.

These indicators were usually presented as collections of social and economic statistics classified by major subject areas such as health, education, labour market, culture, recreation etc.

In an attempt to assess the performance of the agricultural sector in achieving sustainable economic development in Nigerian, our objective will be directed to examining the contributions of the sector to food supply, employment generation, source for raw materials for the industrial sector (generally the Gross Domestic Product) and export earnings.

This is important especially as Nigeria makes proposals to becoming one of the 20th industrialized nations of the world (Vision 20:2020). It must in its preference place priorities on vital sectors of the economy such as agriculture sector which possesses potentiality of serving as the spring board for the realization of its vision.

The agriculture sector in Nigeria is dominated by peasant farmers with roughly 60% of the Nigerian population engage in agricultural production at the subsistence level, it contributes significantly to national food self–sufficiency and accounted for over 90% of total food consumption requirements in the country, the sector further helps in maintaining a healthy and peaceful population and also serve as source of food and nutrition for households.

The agriculture sector is the largest contributor to Gross Domestic Production (GDP), the total share of agriculture sector in GDP for 2012 was estimated to be 23.9% with crops production accounting for 80%, forestry 3% and fishery 4%; Statistics have also shown that over 68% of the Nigerian population are engaged in agricultural activities, that is to say agriculture is the major employer of labour in Nigeria; the agro-industrial enterprises depend on the sector for raw materials whilst 88% of the non-oil exports earning come from the sector and provides over 80% of food need of the country.

Oji-Okoro, (2011) investigated the contribution of agricultural sector on the Nigeria economic development and revealed, foreign direct investment on agriculture contributes the most (56.43), this means that for every unit of change in FDI on agriculture there is a corresponding change of 56.43 unit in GDP in Nigeria.

Suleiman and Aminu, (2010) conducted research on the contribution of agriculture, petroleum and manufacturing sector of the Nigerian economy and found that agricultural sector is contributing higher than both petroleum and manufacturing sector. It was shown that agriculture is contributing 1.7978 units to GDP while petroleum is contributing 1.14 units to GDP.

In reviewing related literature, we observed that emphasis was placed on the importance of the agricultural sector to sustainable economic development of an economy.

It has been proven from historical and empirical evidences as seen above and from subsequent posts that, sustainable economic development of any enduring economy goes hand in hand with it agricultural development, there is therefore every need for Nigeria to optimally exploit to full potential it numerous agricultural resources in order to accelerate its quest and efforts to achieving sustainable economic development.

Thank you for following series of articles on the Appraisal of the Role of Cattle, Poultry, Piggery and Fishery Sub-Sectors to Sustainable Economic Development in Nigeria: 1982-2014. We shall in our next few posts be focusing on discussing the specific role of the selected livestock sectors to sustainable economic development in Nigeria.

Cite as follows: Dan-Abu Michael Ngbede, (2016). Appraisal of the Role of Cattle, Poultry, Piggery and Fishery Sub-Sectors to Sustainable Economic Development in Nigeria: 1982-2014. A research project submitted to the department of Economics, University of Jos, Plateau state, Nigeria in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of Bachelor of Science (B. Sc) in Economics.