RETHINKING AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION: WHEN THEORY STAYS ON PAPER AND FIELDS LIE EMPTY

A Reflection for the Next Generation

In recent years, a question has quietly troubled my conscience — one that, perhaps, every agricultural graduate must confront:

Why do so many of us, trained in agriculture, avoid becoming farmers?

As a university professor, I spent years teaching Crop Science, Soil Chemistry, Agribusiness, and Agricultural Engineering. My lectures were rooted in research, theory, and innovation. Yet, for the longest time, I never tilled a single plot of land for my own food or livelihood.

It felt contradictory.

While we perfected spreadsheets and soil maps in our academic halls, ordinary men and women with no university background were cultivating tonnes of food, building wealth, and quietly transforming Africa's food systems. They were not constrained by theory; they were moved by necessity, determination, and daily innovation.

Meanwhile, we — the "trained" ones — drifted into jobs far removed from the field:

• The Crop Science graduate managing a retail chain.
• The Animal Production expert working at immigration.
• The Agricultural Economist selling policies at an insurance company.

What happened to the dream?
What silenced the passion we once had for land, food, and rural development?

The answer may lie in how agricultural education is delivered — often sterilized, disconnected, and stripped of entrepreneurial urgency. We became skilled in theory but unprepared for the raw, unpredictable reality of farming. We memorized nutrient cycles but feared market cycles. We calculated pH balances but hesitated to balance risk and reward.

We were told to "know the soil," but not necessarily to own it.

Today, I know better. Farming is not a fallback plan. It is not what you do when all else fails. It is an industry. A calling. A multi-billion-dollar frontier waiting for disciplined minds and daring hearts.

Agriculture does not reward theory — it rewards action.

If you have a degree in agriculture, that paper means nothing unless you're using it to solve real problems:

• How to produce more with less.
• How to connect farmers to value chains.
• How to process raw goods into competitive exports.
• How to apply science in the trenches of rural Africa — not just in slideshows.

It’s time we acknowledge this hard truth:
Education is a tool. Farming is the trade. Impact is the outcome.

We must blend academic wisdom with practical resilience. We must take our knowledge and join hands with the men and women on the land, forming Agricultural-Based Clusters (ABCs), building climate-smart farms, launching agribusiness ventures, and transforming food systems from the inside out.

The Rural and Urban Agriculture Innovative Production Program (RUAIPP) is a blueprint for this very shift — a strategy to make agriculture functional, profitable, and dignified again.

We are not just graduates. We are solution-bearers. If we will not be food producers, value-adders, and policy changers — who will?

Let us rise above the myths. Let us unlearn the elitism. Let us return to the land not with fear but with fire.

Because the future of Africa is not in its universities alone.
It is in its soil.

And that future needs you.