This podcast episode was about accessing the impact slavery, colonialism and imperialism had on the Nigerian agriculture and continue to have. The episode first took to educate on and differentiate the different phenomena, also explaining their catalyst and what they were meant to serve/achieve. Retson Tedhke informed on how slavery was born out of the need for cheap labour to power an ever-expanding western capitalism machinery sustaining western economy which without would collapsed. He explained the exploitation of physical and human resources, erosion of cultural values and identity to external intentional western interference leading to loss of African/Nigerian productive power to not only produce but also add value, feed her population and earn meaning returns from such. Retson touched on how these forms of subjugation and exploitation are being maintained and sustained today with political and economic structures and also internal enabling structures as the stooges a product of the colonial rule trained by colonial masters to administer colonies in a way that benefits colonizers. Tedheke emphasised the need of re-education on our history, inclusion of history from basic education, and giving culture importance in repairing our sense of self, what if means to be African/Nigeria, know our potential (especially with manufacturing); he stressed rural agricultural education and investing in rural economy as means to economic security & prosperity. He also championed Africa/Nigeria looking inward & charting alternative political leadership and economic and development strategy, that the liberal democracy has failed. He advised other than to the West to look to the East focusing on agricultural potential, education, nationalism and production culture, and establishing long period of leadership for the elected presidency to be able to chart a vision, clear road map, strategy, action plan, fail and get things right. He offered a list of books to read to be conversant about the topic of this episode, also the history of Africa, the black people, the sabotage of the continent’s economy and for general education, re-education, unlearning and to be better informed, know what has happened and happening, grasp the world, & make informed & better decisions & alliances.

Retson Tedheke is a nationalist and a passionate community development enthusiast dedicated to the promotion of home-grown solutions to National problems. A solutions-Driven Agribusiness Practitioner & Consultant with Experience Leading Cross- Functional Teams in Policy Implementation, Farm Estate/RUGA/Agro Hubs Development, Crop Cultivation, Livestock Management, Farm Produce Processing, Marketing and Delivery of Process Innovations Driving the Attainment of Agribusiness Sustainability Goals, Retson Tedheke is a committed advocate of focused institutionalization of the core principles of cultural preservation as a panacea for economic growth and sustainability. He is the Principal ManagingPartner of The Nigeria Farmers Group and Cooperative Society, a Functional and Classical Model of Farm Settlement That Promotes Real Rural Productivity. Seeking Opportunities to Transform Best Farm Practices with Capacity for Sustainable Agricultural Productivity Particularly in Rural Nigeria, Retson’s NFGCS Located in Ga'ate, Kokona LGA of Nasarawa was established in 2107 to drive Agricultural productivity and serve as a working model that can solve National security problems, attract youths into Agriculture and build sustainable urban-rural migratory framework. In 2022 Retson founded the Asiwaju Farmers Forum which later metamorphosed into Batkash National Farmers Forum and Cooperative Multipurpose Society, which has grown into a community of over 300,000 lead Farmers mobilizer across the 774 local Government areas of Nigeria. He has written substantial articles that reflects the realities of the challenges of Agriculture in Nigeria and solutions to highlighted topics and issues.

The present method and system of agriculture and farming must transform if we are to sustainably feed a rapidly growing global population and rid worsening trends of hunger, malnutrition and environmental hazard with food production.

Digital innovation offers avenue to ensure such and hence must be committed to.

Accompany the innovation must be a ready and enlightened people and workforce that are engaged in farming and agribusiness and/or support farmers.

The personality Lecture of a foremost lecturer Prof. Janice Olawoye at the Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development of the Nigerian Premier University, the University of Ibadan, ushered that in inviting speaker to speak to and transform the same of the agricultural extension students of the department and also participating students from the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), University of Ilorin (Unilorin) and Bowen University.

I was invited as a guest speaker, and I addressed the audience bringing to their awareness the challenges in the agricultural production space that present opportunities.

Nigeria is one of the countries in Africa worst hit by food inflation, her food inflation stat is over 40% and which ranks it 8th among the top 10 countries worst hit by food inflation globally. 13% of the nation’s populace is undernourished. However, the nation has over 200 million people, largely formed by youth and 60% engaged in farming. It has 84m ha of arable land and favourable and diverse agroclimate able to have multiple seasons and raise multiple crops and animals.

One thus wonders how such hunger and malnutrition levels exist with the resource abundance.

I gave reasons why this exist: from farmers having unproductive production facing challenges of weather, pests, diseases, inputs and market, half of foods produced wasted on farm, production not demand driven yielding waste and supply gap, lack of knowledge on farm and business management.

These portray farmer lack access to enhancing information that could transform their operations and improve their yield.

It is where digital innovation comes to play. It entails the adoption and application of technologies that transform processes promoting efficiency, productivity, effectiveness and improved output. Technologies as social media, AI, blockchain, robotics and automations, big data, internet of things, advance predictive analytics.

With this farmers garner data on their day to day operations, make real time decisions, future projections, they can use resources efficiently understanding the precise inputs needed to operate within a certain production cycle, they can have info on market produce and sell to the market appropriately.

While there are barriers to this: socioeconomic status of the farmers, infrastructure and adoption cost barriers, I emphasised the need for policy that provides enabling environment entrenching the adoption of digital innovation. I nonetheless spoke on the roles the agricultural students have.

I reiterated that the agricultural extension students in particular have a big role to play supporting farmers and should commit to such, that they need to start working towards that: observe the immediate problems in their surroundings and how they can proffer a solution.

I admonished on the need for perineal development; taking courses, volunteering, undertaking courses, having personal portfolio of projects, networking, positioning and seeking information.

I ended by expanding their minds on the worth of agriculture and to focus on agribusiness exploring the value chain.

This event is established of the rationale farmers being blamed for risen prices of food; for either not producing enough and/or manipulating supply and production cost and fixing prices.

This has led many to believe farmers are not their friends , and that they should not be given subsidy with the belief that they are using for intended purpose of food production and at affordable price. The misleading narrative hurt farmers' image.

Unintentional and intentional misinformation, disinformation and farmers not telling their challenges with production ensure an enduring poor image of them.

Thus it was important for farmers to firsthand tell their experiences about the critical hurdles they navigate in producing and supplying foods to the consumer table.

Real and well-experienced farmers gathered for this very purpose: Sema Ededeh,Head Farmer at Orijinal Farmer); Ugochukwu Mamah, Farmily FIeld Farms, Sanusi Yusuff, Co-founder at Farmeasy Agroventures, Animashaun Ibrahim, CEO IBF Farms & Agrocommodities.

Their challenges encompassed: climate change, subsidy, inflation, labour, mechanization, irrigation, lack of adequate and appropriate inputs, cost of and transport of inputs and produces .

Ensuring an enabling environment and a vibrant economy that support production and consumption became apparent.

This affects adoption of farming methods -greenhouse ensuring adequate environment for consistent availability of fresh foods and organic farming making available healthy foods.

This spurred a hot argument whether the idea of greenhouse and organic farmings were realistic, profitable and sustainable and would be a commonly adopted method of farming and commercialized, considering the risen operating cost and the income and purchasing states of the consumers. Beyond ‘gap in the market, is there a market in the gap?’.

We reached the conclusion that it was best to adopt local practices that give similar benefits and that people stick to what they can comfortably undertake and those seeking such premium ventures must conduct appropriate planning and establish strategies accordingly (sales, marketing, operating, revenue and profitability).

It was thus in tandem advised to sell to high end markets and adopt price haggling prevention measures (selling over the internet and through special purpose stores).

Overall, farmers were cleared of the accusations but were advised to communicate value and professionalism leveraging personal branding, one the reasons for poor pricing and image from the consumers, and to appropriately plan and ensure proper documentation of procedures, activities, costs and income that help with learning and attracting needed facilities for growth and scale.

As the COP29 Climate Change Conference was ongoing in previous week, we sat to discuss the present state of the climate, the mitigation and adaptation cause, how far it has been achieved within the stipulated time and how realistic the actualization of the net zero goal was with prevailing realities of changed world leadership, growing hardware and software demands and consumption, and inequalities with climate finance and associated capacity in leading the effort in stemming emissions, global warming and climate change.

We accessed this from the lens of Africa and the relevance to the continent and its food systems. It was realize that the continent generated/generates one of the lowest GHGs emissions but is one of the most affected and most at risk of climate change effects but still receives the lowest share of global climate finance which appears unfair and impedes her adaptive measures to climate change and could have worsened human development indexes already burdened by hunger, poverty and inequality and has an agriculture-dependent economy usually rain-fed which climate change could disrupt.

Prof. Fadairo helped to understand the reasons for such climate finance gap citing standard fiduciaries, adequate technical capacity and effective local governance in properly utilizing disbursed funds for targeted goals. He emphasized that while the beneficiary countries could be lacking in those departments that there are instances of structural factors which obstruct finance access for instance, giving grants as loans, gap between fund allocated and fund actually disbursed, and incorporating consultants from the global north countries as part of finance conditions with the position that the global south countries is lacking of required technocrats.

While he acknowledges many of the lapses in the global south countries, in the case of Nigeria, and advising for investment in capacity building, appropriate governance and utilization of received funds, he canvassed for transparency, fairness and honest commitment with the climate cause.

He argued that conditions albeit standards must be

We discussed how issues as these have been breeding division and loss of faith in not only the unified effort in combatting climate change but also the idea of climate change itself, being termed a hoax -means for rich, developed and industrialized global north countries to have developing and struggling global south subservient economically wise.

In tandem the climate change skepticism we also assessed the role misinformation, propaganda, unnecessary hysteria and fear mongering disseminated by the media, researchers and public figures, and called for responsible and balanced reporting and helping the public to understand climate change, their role in causing it and in mitigating it and helping to establish adaptive responses. In tandem, we informed on the need for people's participation.

Prof. Fadairo touched highlighted significant additions the COP29 should include to its governance, operation and execution to ensure fairness, participation, productivity and effectiveness.

Discussing adaptive and mitigation strategies to climate change in Africa, he called proactiveness with government responses to climate change effects and enjoining partnership and participation and instituting domestic revolving climate funds and the importance of investing in

He informed farmers should adopt sustainable and resilient practices, and engage in multiple income generating activities. He called for government support for farmers, assisting with inputs, funds, forecast,

This is a new podcast series dedicated to farmers, where farmers talk about the realities of farming from their firsthand engagement with the field.

This is to share stories of farmers and communicate the real happenings and challenges often going behind the scene with food production and through this clear the misleading narratives -intentional or intentional - about farmers, farming, agriculture and players across the agricultural value chains.

Peter studied Fisheries & Aquaculture from Bowen University and pursued his agricultural passion done graduating.

He started growing catfish with just two bath tubs at his backyard and have since scaled to 11 tanks with a 700-1000kg catfish capacity per production cycle, thus contributing to the food security of his immediate community and helping to supplement income for meeting his household needs.

Asuelimen empahsises the importance of coming with a bold mind into farming and doing everything right and staying the course.

People like Peter with the doggedness to food production irrespective of the challenges are important to national food security and urban regions where food production is limited by increasing urbanisation and industrialisation and with emigration, decreasing farming population and deforestation in rural regions limiting food supply from there to urban places.

Food production in urban places thus is important to buffer what is produced in the counterpart regions.

However, producing food in urban regions presents challenges as we have come to see with lesser availability of arable land and many others.

Peter talks about his individual challenges as regards limited space restricting his scale of operation, agrochemicals inefficacy and sharp practices from retailers impacting his production and margins, and a broader effect of harsh operating environment driven by macroeconomic instability.

Despite his challenges he has stuck with practices that consider environmental health and ensure safe foods and also adopts strategies as networking with suppliers and farmers to secure feed supply and curb unfair trade practices accordingly, where he enjoin other farmers to adapt same healthy practices and strategies to promote resilient healthy food systems and agribusinesses.

Poultry products provide high quality protein and used to be affordable allowing for easy access of essential protein and minerals important for proper physical, mental growth and development.
So when the prices of eggs and chickens are off the roof our food security is challenged with many falling into hunger and malnutrition, worsening human development index.
It’s the reason discourse as this is crucial.
Experts in the poultry and agrocommodity sectors will be helping us fully understand the challenge in the sector from the production and input supply chain arenas and offer robust potent solutions.

One of the prevailing adaptation trends with food insecurity and economic hardship, is people choosing to grow their own foods.

More people are now seeking to grow their own foods to meet their family food security and supplement household budget in this time of food inflation.

As this unfolds, cucumber, amongst other crops, becomes a crop of importance.

This thus makes the crop readily adoptable and a fast money spinner, which would huge earnings now, retailing at higher price than we had seen.

But just as it’s easy to grow the production also is delicate.

A fungus disease could seize all plant stands overnight and unfavorable conditions abort fruits decimating yield and snapping margins; this with other limiting factors making production fail.

Having in-depth knowledge thus is prerequisite to a successful cucumber venture.

This episodes embodies this with knowledge given from years of engaging in the sector by Ugo Mammah, informing what it takes to grow cucumber successfully and profitable.

Ugo shared his backstory of navigating agriculture landscape to crop production, which offers practical guide to would-be farmers on navigating career journey, clarity and purpose, and overcoming adversity.

The episode dealt with cucumber farming from two aspects of successfully growing cucumber and also selling the produces from production and at a good price enlightening on effective sales and marketing strategies.