By Boluwatife Adedokun
For years, agriculture has occupied a familiar place in Osun State’s political promises.
Governments have talked about tractors, improved seedlings, farm inputs, mechanisation, agricultural financing and agro-industrialisation. During the 2026 governorship campaign, the language was hardly different.
The incumbent, Ademola Adeleke, defended his administration’s agricultural record, pointing to 31 tractors, subsidised tractorisation and the distribution of crop seedlings.
The APC candidate, Bola Oyebamiji, promised to make mechanised farming a major part of his economic programme, while the ADC candidate, Najeem Salaam, proposed farm estates, farmers’ markets, agricultural machinery, subsidised inputs and irrigation infrastructure.
On paper, the direction appears clear: agriculture is expected to help Osun fight poverty, create jobs and strengthen food security.
But there is a question that should remain after the campaign posters come down:
Is Osun giving farmers what they need to build profitable and resilient farms, or is agricultural policy still too focused on distributing inputs and announcing projects?
That distinction matters because farming does not end when a tractor enters a field or when a seedling is handed to a farmer.
The real test begins afterwards.
The tractor question
The Adeleke administration says it acquired 31 tractors which are serving farmers across the state’s 30 local government areas and the Ife East Area Office.
According to the state government, those tractors cultivated 4,511 acres between 2025 and April 2026. It also said farmers could access the service at a subsidised rate of ₦20,000 per acre, compared with private-sector rates of about ₦35,000 to ₦40,000.
That is an important intervention in a state where access to mechanisation can determine how quickly farmers prepare their land.
But tractor acquisition should not be the end of the conversation.
The more important questions are about access, coverage and outcomes.
How many farmers have actually benefited?
How many acres can the available tractors realistically cover during the planting window?
How quickly can a smallholder farmer secure the service?
And has the intervention significantly reduced production costs?
These are the measurements that matter to a farmer.
The APC’s Oyebamiji also made mechanisation a central part of his campaign, promising aggressive mechanised farming across agrarian communities and improved rural roads to connect farmers with markets.
That means whoever governs Osun now faces an obvious challenge: how to move mechanisation from a political promise into a system that reaches farmers consistently and at a cost they can afford.
Seedlings are only the beginning
The same argument applies to improved seedlings.
The state government reported in April that 400,000 cocoa seedlings had been planted since 2023, alongside 80,000 cashew and 60,000 oil-palm seedlings. It said the programme was intended to expand production and strengthen the state’s position in these cash-crop value chains.
This is potentially significant.
But planting a seedling does not automatically create an agricultural economy.
A cocoa farmer needs to keep that tree alive for years.
The farmer needs agronomic advice, disease management, labour, appropriate inputs and eventually access to a reliable market.
The same applies to cashew and oil palm.
If the state measures success only by the number of seedlings distributed, it risks measuring the beginning of the process rather than its outcome.
A stronger agricultural policy would track the seedlings beyond distribution:
How many survived?
How many farmers maintained them?
What yields are eventually being recorded?
Who buys the produce?
How much income does the farmer retain?
Those are the figures that can tell Osun whether its agricultural investments are actually changing livelihoods.
The bigger problem is the value chain
One of the weaknesses of agricultural politics in Nigeria is the tendency to concentrate on production while paying less attention to everything that happens afterwards.
A farmer may produce more maize and still remain poor.
A cassava farmer may increase his harvest and still struggle.
A tomato farmer can record a bumper harvest and lose money because the produce spoils before reaching the market.
Agricultural productivity without market access can therefore become a frustrating cycle.
Interestingly, Osun’s own O-REAP programme has long recognised this problem.
The programme’s stated objectives include improving food security, creating jobs, linking farmers to consumer and industrial markets and helping farmers capture more value along the agricultural value chain.
This is an important direction.
It suggests that Osun’s agricultural challenge has never simply been about getting more people to plant crops.
It is about building a system around the farmer.
That system should connect: land → inputs → mechanisation → production → storage → processing → transportation → markets.
A weakness at any point can undermine everything before it.
This is where the campaign promises should be tested
The 2026 campaign produced several agricultural proposals.
Oyebamiji promised an agriculture-driven economy, mechanised farming and rural roads designed to connect farming communities to markets.
Salaam proposed farmers’ markets and farm estates across the state. He also spoke about agricultural machinery and support for farmers.
In another campaign statement, Salaam proposed subsidised inputs, guaranteed off-take and irrigation infrastructure, arguing that agricultural interventions must take account of farmers’ timing and seasonal realities.
The incumbent Adeleke, meanwhile, campaigned on an “Agro-Industrial Expansion” agenda and pointed to his administration’s tractorisation, cocoa expansion and agricultural initiatives as evidence of what he had already started.
The proposals are different, but they reveal something important.
Osun’s political class now broadly agrees that agriculture matters.
The real debate should therefore move beyond whether agriculture deserves attention.
It should be about what kind of agricultural system the state wants to build.
Farmers need information as much as inputs
One area that deserves considerably more attention is agricultural extension.
Giving farmers inputs without giving them adequate information can limit the impact of the intervention.
A farmer needs to know which seed is appropriate for a particular environment, when to plant, how to manage pests and diseases, how much fertiliser is appropriate and how changing rainfall patterns should influence farming decisions.
Climate change makes this even more important.
The farmer who used to rely on a familiar planting calendar may increasingly need access to reliable weather and climate information.
This presents an opportunity for Osun to combine conventional agricultural extension with technology.
Radio programmes, mobile-phone services, WhatsApp groups, digital advisory platforms and local-language agricultural information can complement extension officers.
And this is where agricultural technology should be judged differently.
The question should not simply be:
“Does the technology exist?”
It should be:“Can the smallholder farmer afford it, understand it and use it?”
A sophisticated agricultural application that requires expensive internet access may have little value to a farmer who has poor connectivity.
A climate advisory tool that is available in English alone may not reach the farmer who needs it most.
Technology must therefore be designed around the realities of the people it is supposed to serve.
Rural roads are agricultural infrastructure
There is another issue that deserves greater attention in the agricultural debate: roads.
For farmers, a rural road is not merely a transport project.
It is part of agricultural infrastructure.
A poor road can increase the cost of transporting fertiliser to a farm and produce from the farm.
It can also determine whether traders reach a community, whether produce arrives at the market before it spoils and whether farmers can access services during critical periods.
This makes Oyebamiji’s campaign emphasis on rural roads particularly relevant to the agricultural discussion.
But road construction should also be assessed by its agricultural impact.
A better question than simply asking how many kilometres of rural roads are constructed is:
Which farming communities became easier to access because of them?
That is a more meaningful measure of agricultural infrastructure.
What about storage and processing?
Osun’s agricultural future will also depend on what happens after harvest.
If farmers are forced to sell immediately because they lack storage, they have little bargaining power.
If they sell raw crops rather than processed products, they capture a smaller share of the value chain.
This is why the state’s stated interest in agro-processing is important.
The Adeleke administration has linked its crop expansion programme with efforts to develop agro-processing infrastructure around cocoa and other value chains.
But again, the critical issue is implementation.
A processing plant is useful only if farmers can supply it, access it and benefit from the market it creates.
Otherwise, it risks becoming another infrastructure project disconnected from the farmer.
What Osun should measure
If the state genuinely wants agriculture to become an engine of economic development, its agricultural scorecard should change.
The number of tractors purchased matters.
But tractor utilisation matters more.
The number of seedlings distributed matters.
But seedling survival and eventual yield matter more.
The amount allocated to agriculture matters.
But how much was actually spent and what changed because of it matters more.
The number of farmers registered for a programme matters.
But how many became more productive or profitable matters more.
The number of kilometres of rural roads constructed matters.
But how those roads changed farmers’ access to markets matters more.
This is the difference between measuring activities and measuring results.
The next agricultural agenda
Osun does not necessarily need to invent an entirely new agricultural philosophy.
It already has the foundation of one.
Its O-REAP strategy talks about food security, job creation, market linkages, value addition and wealth creation.
The newer agricultural interventions have added mechanisation, crop expansion and agro-processing.
The campaign proposals have brought in farm estates, farmers’ markets, irrigation, rural roads and guaranteed markets.
The missing ingredient is therefore not necessarily another list of promises.
It is coordination, continuity and measurable delivery.
The state could build a stronger agricultural system by connecting these interventions rather than treating them as separate projects.
A tractor should connect to a farmer.
The farmer should connect to inputs and extension.
Production should connect to storage.
Storage should connect to processing.
Processing should connect to markets.
And the entire system should be measured by one final question:
Did the farmer become more productive and more profitable?
Agriculture after the election
The 2026 Osun governorship election has now passed, but the agricultural promises made during the campaign should not disappear with it.
They should become a public scorecard.
The new administration of Ademola Adeleke whichever political direction it takes, should be judged not simply by how many agricultural projects it announces, but by whether farming becomes more viable for the people who depend on it.
That means making mechanisation accessible, strengthening extension services, improving rural roads, expanding storage and processing, providing useful climate information, opening markets and ensuring that agricultural interventions reach the smallholders they are designed to support.
Most importantly, government should make it possible for the public to follow the money.
