Recent disclosure by three experts deserve attention as a way of promoting agricultural production in Nigeria. A Professor of Veterinary Anatomy, Adebayo Akinloye, has advocated the domestication of African giant rat in order to compliment grasscutter cultivation in the country, saying this important animal resource is a treasure to behold and appreciated.
Prof. Akinloye revealed that African giant rat has all indices and qualities of a domesticated animal with a very great potential for its production to become profitable to a farmer, adding that efforts and studies were currently ongoing in the faculties and departments of Forestry and Wildlife Management, and College of Veterinary Medicine on grasscutter domestication in the country.
The don reiterated that as giant of Africa, the nation must begin to diversify from being an oil-based economy by opening more gates of possibilities for both fertilisation of ideas and production of national profit, saying “it is high time the giant of Africa tapped into the economic potentials of the African giant rats”. He, however, emphasised that institutions need to blaze the trail by encouraging scientists from wildlife management, zoology, animal science and veterinary medicine to revive the work where it was stopped. He added that revisiting the project would go a long way in diversifying the protein sources on the table, conserve the wild stocks, and improve the revenue base of the micro-livestock farming communities.
Prof. Akinloye maintained that anatomy had evolved and needed to be well equipped, stressing that they wanted to develop to the stage of not only dissecting animals, but evolve to the stage of ‘anatomy made easy’. The don, who reiterated that the field “is very important in the country”, said “there are prospects for anatomy students everywhere in the world”, stating the the lecture would be an eye-opener for everything taken for granted and also connect giant rat to what is happening in the country, which is the giant of Africa. He said the lecture would be a call to action for Nigeria, and to know the potentials of African giant rat, the economic benefits and also to raise awareness of their importance and values in a bid to enhance food production in the country.
Similarly, a renowned Professor of Soil Microbiology, Oluwatoyin Babalola, has said that policy on agricultural practices in Nigeria should promote sound management of soil organic matter. She made this known in her lecture titled: ‘Soil Microbes: Nature’s Workforce for Soil Quality Maintenance, and Sustenance of Environmental Integrity’. She called for government’s support for organic farming, stressing that organic agriculture requires a more deliberate and concerted support from all stakeholders in order to encourage farmers adoption and participation, adding that organic production system promotes soil health, ecosystem services, food safety, and environmental health.
She emphasised that conservation agriculture should be encouraged and promoted, noting that farmers should be encouraged to embrace soil conservation practices such as conservation tillage, cover cropping and crop rotation, saying these practices tend to protect and preserve soil resources, thereby enhancing their contributions to soil productivity. The Soil Microbiologist, however, reiterated that “there is need to intensify efforts on obtaining research funding”, noting that many of their research efforts had demonstrated high agricultural potentials of some materials, but many of these materials have not been packaged into adaptable technologies that can be made available to farmers. She said there was the need for more applied research to translate successful basic research into inputs that farmers could use, and called for strong collaboration between researchers and agricultural extension workers in Nigeria.
On his part, Prof. Olukayode Bamgbose’s lecture was titled: ‘In the Footprints of the Environment: Every Contact Leaves a Trace on Our Common Future’, whereby the Professor of Analytical and Environmental Chemistry revealed that every human contact leaves a footprint, noting that “he is a detective, tracking the footprints of human on the environment”. He added that the importance of environmental education is to educate the mind of the people on how they treat the environment because when adequate attention is not given to this, there are bound to be problems. Prof. Bamgbose further urged all Nigerians to take care of their environment so that the people coming behind would have a good place to operate and live in and a fertile environment that would support agricultural production.
From the three professors, it can be deduced that Nigeria must begin to diversify from being an oil-based economy by opening more gates of possibilities for both fertilisation of ideas and production of national profit. Furthermore, the policy on agricultural practices in Nigeria should promote sound management of soil organic matter to promote soil health and the environment.
Farmers should also be encouraged to embrace soil conservation practices to protect and preserve soil resources while the importance of environmental education should be stressed for the people to take care of their environment for healthy living meaning that that is correlation between man, farming, and the environment and, therefore, they should be given appropriate attention.
