Agro-productivity amidst environmental degradation and energy usage in Nigeria

This study revisits the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 which aims to “end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” by highlighting the impact of environmental degradation (proxied by carbon emissions) and non-renewable energy on agro-productivity in Nigeria. Using annual time series data from 1980 to 2018, the study engages the Johansen cointegration and impulse response functions (IRFs) techniques within the vector autoregressive (VAR) framework. Evidence reveals that carbon emissions significantly reduce agro-productivity by 0.23% while non-renewable energy boosts agro-productivity by 5.38%, on average, ceteris paribus. Other results reveal that domestic credit, rural population and arable land exert asymmetric effects. These outcomes are consistent and align with a priori expectations. Policy recommendations are discussed.