So Fresh Founder Condemns 'Buhari's Obsession With Ancient Agric Idea'

The founder of So Fresh, Olagoke Balogun, has tackled President Muhammadu Buhari-led government's push for more Nigerians to go into farming, stating that the obsession of wanting more Nigerians involved in farming is an primitive mindset that shouldn't be entertained in the 21st century.

Balogun said what the agricultural sector needs is not an increase in farmers, but improved logistics.

According to him, the government should be concerned about the value chain and not be obsessed with primary agriculture in 2020.

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The government has been pushing for more farmers as a way of boosting productivity, but Balogun said such strategy won't scale.

He made this known while reacting to a tweet from the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), which quoted Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed, "We have to encourage people to go back to farming and also encourage those people to maximize the product that comes out of that farming”

100-year-old Mindset Is Nigeria's Agric Problem

While addressing Ahmed's comment, Balogun said, "No! We actually need less people. This obsession with primary agriculture in 2020 I'll never understand. And NO! we don't have to make farming cool for young people, we just need to make it efficient & more productive so we have less people in primary agriculture. Why?

"A So Fresh will always make at least 5 multiples of what a farmer would make from 1 Pineapple, therefore able to employ more people, pay more taxes, create more indirect jobs and generally create more value in the economy. It pays everybody to have more of Gokes, Affis, etc.

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"We should actively encourage less people to be in the farm by increasing farm productivity and logistics and then push more people into higher value creating part of Agriculture. We can create more value internally, we can export, we can create more wealth. Everybody wins.

"The Nigerian Government's thought process (I assume there's a process) of pushing more people into farming is not different from the mindset of "one man giving birth to 20+ children so they can have human resources to farm" 

"The problem is that it's a 100 year old mindset. It is the most basic thoery of increased productivity and it just won't work at scale," he said in a tweet seen by AllNews.