How can horticulture be made a viable subsector of the agricultural economy?
Horticulture is supposed to be the most viable. Let me give you an example. When you want to buy an apple, its about N120. If you want to buy grapes, a kilo goes for about N2,500 and if you want to buy two kilos of rice, it is actually less than that. So horticultural crops are usually high value crops, and their demands are usually high. At the same time, they give very high returns. Let’s talk of flowers alone. Do you know that countries like Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Kenya and even our neighbor, Cameroun make a lot of money from exporting flowers? Unfortunately, in Nigeria, the situation is not well developed. We still have a long way to go in ensuring that farmers, most especially horticulturalists, realize that they can actually make higher returns when they cultivate horticultural crops. Another very important thing is that most of the horticultural crops are low gestation crops. For example, if you plant maize, it will take you two to three months before you will harvest. If y
