Agricultural Science 2020 Jamb Examination

Agriculture is primarily concerned with providing food, which is the basic necessity for human survival and also sustains livestock. While agriculture may generate foreign exchange, raw materials, and employment, these are secondary roles. The most fundamental role is ensuring food security by producing crops and livestock products that directly nourish humans and support animals kept for farming and other economic purposes.

Subsistence farming is characterised by small farm sizes, traditional methods, and production aimed at meeting the immediate food needs of the farmer and his household. This means that little or no surplus is left for sale in markets. As such, yields are low, savings are not common, and production rarely extends beyond family consumption.

Farm settlement schemes are designed to integrate farmers into communities where land and resources are efficiently used to ensure self-sufficiency. Mixed farming, which involves combining crop cultivation with livestock rearing, is most recommended because it enhances soil fertility, ensures balanced resource use, reduces risk of complete crop failure, and improves food security.

Agricultural policies are usually aimed at improving productivity, ensuring food security, promoting exports, and supporting industrial growth with raw materials. Encouraging peasant farming is not a focus, since governments aim to modernise agriculture through mechanisation, education, and improved farming systems rather than expanding low-output subsistence farming.

Silviculture refers to the cultivation and management of trees, which is an agricultural use of land. It falls within forestry practices that contribute to environmental sustainability, timber production, and land resource management. Mining, housing, and transportation are non-agricultural uses of land.

In agricultural economics, capital refers to man-made assets or resources that support production, such as machinery, farm buildings, and sometimes perennial crops and livestock, as they generate long-term returns. Labour, however, is categorised separately as a factor of production, distinct from capital.

Demand in economics refers to the quantity of a good or service a consumer is willing and able to purchase at different prices within a given time. It is distinct from preference, which reflects taste, and supply, which refers to what producers offer in the market. Elastic limit is unrelated in this context. Hence, willingness and ability to buy rice describe demand.

Artificial scarcity occurs when goods are deliberately withheld to manipulate prices. Wholesalers and middlemen often hoard products to create higher prices in markets. Farmers generally sell their produce directly after harvest and cooperatives exist to stabilise supply and improve market fairness, making them less likely to cause artificial scarcity.

According to the law of supply and demand, when supply of a commodity increases while demand remains constant, the price of the commodity falls. This is because more goods are available in the market than consumers are willing to buy at the previous price, leading sellers to reduce prices to attract buyers.

Marketing processes involve activities that move goods from producers to consumers, including assembling, storage, distribution, advertising, and processing. Production, however, is a separate process that comes before marketing and focuses on creating goods, not moving them to the market.