Agriculture is the most sort after form of conventional economic activities if not in any part of the world but I know of a country Nigeria (my country) where almost 80% of the country are into agriculture. Conventional economic activities are those economic activities that has been established by laws and being in existence for years.
To me agriculture is not something that should be underated in any part of the world. Except man stops consuming food which is not possible. So with this view, agriculture should be something most people should go into as it does not only provide food for the citizens but also create employment. The only problem now is that agricultural aspects of some places has refused to be given attention to, they are not modernised,
If this is done I believed the great percentage of people who are crying here and there for no jobs will be gainfully self employed.
I remember back then, when I was staying with my grandparents in a place called Akpaboyo,.(A place in Cross River State) I used to view agriculture as something that is meant for 'old people' for people who never do well in life.
I remember how i will always pretend to be sick whenever my grandma will say we should go to the farm and do some work. The part I hated most was the process of producing palm oil.
It was never an easy task. From going to the farm to harvest the palm fruits. you will have to wait for the person to manage climb the three one after the other checking the ribe ones for harvesting. And this thing will take days since it is only one person assigned to harvest a large portion of farm and without machines or things that will make it easy. After spending weeks harvesting, you will have to still spend some weeks again before it is finally taken to the mill to be cooked and then, they had a big hole where they puts it to pound.
The whole process was tiring and annoying and draining. I didn't even mention the planting of cassava process, where one person will be hired too to dig the holes and then we will do the planting. While doing this I was praying for my holiday to finish fast so I can go back to my parents house.
But growing up have realised that agriculture can not be avoided but can be done in a better way.
The part of agriculture which I would have love to do is palm oil production. I mean if a machine can be invented to actually stand on the ground to plug the fruits up. It will be much better. All thanks to the mill aspects of it, at least some machines have been made available to actually select the chaf from the real Cannel and then a machine to press the oil out. With this the process is a little bit easy.
Mechanised agriculture is using machines to replace human labour. It is of great advantage because it encourage people to go into large scale farming. As they are sure there's a machine that will make the work easy for them. At least it will make people not to see agriculture as something that is meant for the 'never do well' or "old people"
On the other side, people who does not have technical know-how will not be able to venture into mechanised farming as they won't be able to use the machines and that will discourage them from going into agriculture to produce food.
Some of this machines are expensive, so it has discourage lots of people to venturing into it since they can not afford it
Aside from that, some people are not ready to upgrade their mind, they still believed in old way of doing things, by using fertilisers on the crop for proper growth. So this might hinder the growth of mechanised farming.
If I have my way I'll create an app that will connect farmers together.
This app will provide the necessary information for farmers. Probably educate them on how to preserve their products and how to sell them to earn lots of money. The app will enable them go with the current trends. It will also ease the movement of their products as farmers from different part of country will come together and put their minds together to make food that will be exchanged.
( A situation where I'll bring my own products that can't grow in your environment and also collects products that can't grow in my environment.) With this they'll be a balance of food.
I will name the app " The life wire connect" since agriculture is the life wire of any country. Because it provides food for both those who go into it and also to people who are not into it.
Thank you guys