The emerging white farmers and future of agriculture in nigeria.

The debate on the new policy objective of emerging white farmers in Nigeria is given some attention in this paper Nigeria's decision to go back to agriculture as engine of growth and development having seen the volatility of oil revenue as a result of fluctuating oil price and the ever adjusting oil quota export, has not yielded good dividends For the past fifty years Nigeria had initiated and implemented various agricultural development programmes, but none has brought the desired success For example, the national mean yield (hg/ha) for the Nigerian staples - sorghum, millet, maize, rice paddy, yam and cassava have remained at very low levels of 10089, 10041, 12008, 16,393, 93702 and 102658 respectively Agriculture in Nigeria has therefore remained undeveloped For example, in 2001, Nigeria spent US$ 326 8m on the importation 1765500 tonnes of rice from the world market This study therefore appraised the various agricultural programs of Nigeria in the past 36 years exploring their impact on output volume and yield of six Nigerian staple foods It also examined the degree of integration and interaction between white farmers and Nigerian rural farmers Sixty households who had interactions with the white farmers supplied the primary data, secondary data came from published materials Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis The local farmers responded favourably to the training organized by the white farmers For example, while 100% were aware of land clearing without burning, 70% tried it and 4% adopted For ridge making 70% were aware, but 50% tried it and 30% adopted It For spacing (soybean), 100% were aware, 40% tried it and 25% adopted It The white farmers have ceased from building isolated large farm communities with little or no interactions with the local farmers as was the case in Zimbabwe The degree of interaction with the local farmers is encouraging having led to 133% and 18 52% increases in mean yield levels of maize and rice above mean national levels The anticipated medium and long time problems which border on ownership of land has been taken care of by giving the white farmers a 50-year lease It is recommended that Nigeria should give the new policy thrust a trial