Thematic Analysis of Agricultural Government Policy and Operational Problems

The purpose of this study was to uncover ground truth policy insights underlying the agriculture crisis from the perspectives of rural farm operations in Nigeria. The needs of rural farmers were otherwise not adequately reflected in national or regional economic development policies. The grounded theory formal method was applied using NVivo software. A focus group was conducted with 16 agricultural extension workers, who are an advanced category of educated experts acting as mentors to rural Nigerian farmers. Audio data were coded into thematic concept maps using discourse analysis. The findings of this study were generally consistent with the extant literature, but several different issues emerged. Rural farmers in Nigeria have significant agricultural challenges with government support in six core areas: farming input quality and dissemination, fair input subsidization, training, market facilitation, social responsibility to reduce corruption, and poverty.