Kyari: Nigeria Can’t Achieve Food Security by Solely Expanding Farmland

•Declares extension must drive farm productivity

James Emejo and Aminat Hassan in Abuja

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, has warned that the country cannot meet the food needs of its projected 400 million population by simply expanding the amount of land under cultivation.

Kyari stressed that productivity gains must increasingly come from knowledge, technology, and stronger agricultural extension systems.

He spoke at the opening of Africa Agribusiness Extension Summit (AAES) 2026.

The minister said agricultural extension should be treated as critical infrastructure capable of delivering productivity improvements across millions of farms.

He stated that the country’s rapidly growing population made it imperative to move beyond fragmented agricultural interventions and build an extension system that could continuously deliver the right information to farmers.

Kyari stated, “Nigeria reflects that reality. We are home to more than 240 million people, with our population projected to approach 400 million by 2050.

“Most of the food required by Africans still must be produced from the farms that are already here with us now. We cannot feed that future on more land alone.”

With agriculture accounting for about 34 per cent of total employment in Nigeria, Kyari said the effectiveness of extension services would have implications not only for food production but also for household incomes, resilience and livelihoods.

He cited evidence showing that access to extension services was associated with lower food insecurity and significantly higher household assets, while mobile agricultural advisory services had been found to improve yields and increase adoption of recommended farm inputs.

According to him, the implication is that relatively small improvements in farm-level knowledge can translate into significant productivity gains when deployed across millions of farmers.

“Extension must be treated as infrastructure,” he said, comparing agricultural advisory systems with roads and power infrastructure that must remain functional and deliver economic value over the long term.

He said, “A project can deliver advice for three seasons. Infrastructure must deliver for 30 years. For Africa, that distinction matters.”

Kyari said the federal government was already shifting extension from conventional face-to-face services towards digital platforms capable of reaching farmers more quickly and in forms they could use.

He disclosed that more than 100,000 farmers across six states received weekly text messages on rainfall expectations and crop protection, while a digital agricultural extension platform was being rolled out to provide advisory services through text and voice in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Pidgin.

The government, he added, had deployed more than 1,000 digital extension agents equipped with tablets through the National Agricultural Development Fund, while 774 agricultural desk officers were being positioned across local government areas.

The minister also disclosed that he had approved a steering committee to harmonise the ministry’s various digital extension initiatives involving its departments and agencies.

He said the move was intended to prevent the emergence of competing information systems as more agricultural services moved online.

“The farmer should hear one trusted message, not many competing ones,” Kyari said, adding that the government would also work with the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) to integrate climate information into advisory services.

He warned that digitalisation could otherwise reproduce the same fragmentation that had weakened conventional extension systems.

“As African countries digitise agriculture, we must avoid replacing institutional fragmentation with digital fragmentation,” he said.

The summit also highlighted the gender dimension of extension. Kyari said women, who played major roles in planting, harvesting, processing, and marketing, should be deliberately targeted by advisory systems.

He advocated direct outreach to women farmers, including through female extension agents who understood local cultural contexts.

Chief Executive/Co-founder of Extension Africa, Tajudeen Yahaya, said Nigeria’s extension system remained severely constrained by inadequate personnel, weak data systems, and poor coordination among stakeholders.

Yahaya said one extension agent currently served about 10,000 farm families, making it difficult to provide farmers with timely technical advice.

He called for investment in extension personnel, farmer data, technology, and partnerships, stating that no single intervention can fix the system.

He said, “What is missing is just that collaboration… that partnership amongst stakeholders. That intentionality around building that infrastructure.”

Yahaya said the economic test of agricultural technology should ultimately be whether it lowered farmers’ production costs or improved their access to premium markets.

“For farmers, it’s about cost reduction and profit maximisation,” he said.

He also called for extension to become a viable career for young Nigerians, stating that attracting a new generation of professionals would require sustainable remuneration and clearer economic opportunities.