Making a Difference on Two Continents

Ag Professor Oluwarotimi Odeh is Planting Global Seeds, Harvesting Local Change

By Lori Gilbert

When he returned to his native country, Nigeria, for seven months as a Fulbright Scholar, Stanislaus State’s Roland Starn Endowed Chair and Director of Agriculture Oluwarotimi Odeh found the homecoming quite revealing and fulfilling.

Not only were the students in his entrepreneurship class at his alma mater, Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) in Ondo State, amazed to hear what the United States was like, but his former professors, many now retired, treated him with an embarrassing level of deference.

“You don’t need to call me professor. I’m your student,” Odeh said. “It also taught me a lesson. However far you go in life, the most important thing you can do is pull people along behind you and celebrate with them when they move past you. That’s what we pray for — that some of our students grow up to be better than us. You sow that seed to grow to be something bigger than you.”

Odeh is sowing those seeds on two continents: his native Africa and his adopted North America, where he came in 2001 to pursue a doctorate in agricultural economics at Kansas State University. He’s not just educating students but also mentoring fellow faculty members. During a recent talk about his Fulbright experience, Odeh encouraged colleagues to pursue overseas teaching opportunities.

“If you are thinking about it, please seize the opportunity,” he told them. “It’s an opportunity that won’t just change your scholarship, but it will change your perspective. You are needed in some of these places.”

Being back in his homeland for seven months reminded Odeh there was work to be done there.

His position there — which allowed him and his wife, Bukky, to visit his 87-year-old mother and allow their two pre-school aged children to meet her — was to establish entrepreneurship courses to help battle high unemployment in the country.

With agriculture second to petroleum in Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP), Odeh’s expertise is valued.

“Probably 60 to 70 percent of the population relies on agriculture,” Odeh said. “Almost every area has farms, which are very small and not as advanced as we have here, but that’s an opportunity for tremendous growth.”

Leveraging creativity was a major lesson in entrepreneurship Odeh taught when he divided his class of 87 students into small groups and gave each 500 Nigerian Naira, worth about 30 cents, and told them to start a business.

One group turned the 500 Naira into 16,500 by selling pencils and pens to students in their classes. Now, the group has set up a LinkedIn page and YouTube video as they look to expand their empire.

We have a responsibility to prepare students for the challenges they will face and the responsibility to feed their generation and those coming after them.

- Oluwarotimi OdehRoland Starn Endowed Chair and Director of Agriculture

Though that team didn’t create an ag product, this lesson demonstrated the steps needed to construct a profitable business. Adapting evolving technologies for Nigerian farms will take ingenuity as well as making creative use of available resources.

Odeh’s work didn’t end in the classroom during his Nigerian stay. After receiving an invitation to present at the U.S. Embassy, he noticed other universities had promotional materials and information available to visitors. Stan State is now planning to do the same.

He also organized a workshop on open-source statistical packages and gave a keynote address at a symposium organized by the student's association. Facilitating the establishment of an alumni association of the university’s Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics was another highlight of the trip. As a separate venture, he joined friends to create a school that will provide high schoollevel education in the state capital and also cater to students with disabilities. The school is scheduled to open in August 2025.

Now that he’s back at Stan State, the benefit of his Fulbright opportunity continues with his current students.

“I have a responsibility to ensure that our students get a broader understanding of the agriculture industry,” he said. “Most of our crops are being exported. How do we ensure the next generation of leaders in the ag industry is conscious that the market is broader than the U.S.? How do they continue to educate themselves, become aware and be sensitive to this changing demand and the opportunities in the world?

“Ag businesses will survive because everybody has to eat. Being sensitive to emerging opportunities and the technologies that come along with them is critical for any business to survive.”

Odeh’s background and appreciation for agriculture were fostered by visiting the cocoa plantation owned by his mother’s family as a child.

“Some think of ag as a career,” Odeh said. “We see it as a privilege, but with it comes responsibility. It is a huge responsibility to be able to feed the world.

“Africa’s food insecurity is huge. Stan State is located in arguably the most productive area in the world. Our responsibility is not only to people here but to feed the world — acting locally while thinking globally. That’s one of the reasons I think it’s very important to delve deeper into this issue of how we feed the world’s increasing population. That is what has led me on this path.

“We have a responsibility to prepare students for the challenges they will face and the responsibility to feed their generation and those coming after them.”