Author(s): Tanko Gambo and Zubair MA

Abstract: This study investigates the impact of maize and sorghum production on Nigeria’s economic growth using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modelling approach. Agricultural productivity remains a cornerstone of Nigeria’s economy, yet the specific contributions of key staple crops like maize and sorghum to GDP growth have received limited empirical attention. The study utilizes annual time series data from (1960-2024), sourced from national bureau of statistics. After conducting unit root tests to determine the stationarity properties of the variables, the ARDL bound testing approach to cointegration is employed to assess both the short-run dynamics and long-run relationships between crop production and economic growth The results revealed that, in the short-run, the ECM(-1) coefficient of maize is -1.120, which is negative and statistically significant with a p-value of 0.000145(less than 0.01) at 5% level of significance, indicating that there is indeed short-run adjustment in the relationship between maize production and economic growth, however, the relationship between GDP and sorghum production captured by the variable X.t for ΔGDP(6.58e-09) is positive but very small, with a marginally significant t-value. In the long-run, the F-statistic value ( 8.678) is greater than the upper bound critical value at the 5% significance level (5.73), indicating the presence of a long-run co-integration relationship among the variables (maize and GDP), however, the long-run coefficient (1.374e+08) reveals that an increase in sorghum production positively influences GDP at 5% level of significance. This suggests that over time, higher sorghum production contributes to economic growth. The findings suggests that increased investment in agriculture, support for maize and sorghum farmers, and agricultural policy formulation can contribute to economic growth of Nigeria.

DOI: 10.22271/maths.2025.v10.i10a.2170

Pages: 01-05 | Views: 55 | Downloads: 11

Download Full Article: Click Here