Experts and stakeholders in the agricultural sector have weighed in on the key variables responsible for Nigeria’s food crisis.
The experts noted that in the past, agriculture in Nigeria was the major driver of the economy as farmers in the states and regions focused their productions on areas where they had comparative advantage and grew food for local consumption and exportation.
They also noted that in the North, the farmers produce more rice, maize, groundnut and these foods were in surplus, while in the South West, there was the massive production of cocoa and cassava, the South East boasted of oil palm production and these agricultural produce were used to develop the regions.
As the country continues to make progress politically, the agricultural sector continues to dwindle with less focus on the sector and more focus on political activities and oil exploration in the Niger Delta region.
Now, Nigeria is currently facing a food crisis as the little available food is no longer affordable, farmers are closed, industries are running short of raw materials, the government is being distracted by insecurity and an ever rising political crisis.
Stakeholders in the agricultural sector in their several opinions had pointed towards inconsistent policies and the insincerity of the state governments in investing in agriculture as one of the factors that brought the country to this deplorable situation.
Also, insecurity was also identified as a major factor that pushed Nigeria into a food crisis, as farmers in the states that grow more food are being killed and kidnapped by bandits, thereby abandoning their farmers and relocating to the cities.
The President and founder of Community Allied Farmers Association of Nigeria (COMAFAS), Dr Austine Maduka, said that the discovery of oil made Nigeria to become lazy in terms of agricultural production. He said this discovery made the youth to relocate from the rural areas where they should practice farming to the urban cities for oil and gas jobs.
He also pointed out that the inconsistent agricultural policies of the government over the years have really affected food production.
“Also, the inability of the government to sustain its program initiated; the government was not responsive in the area of continuity of program. As a military head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo came with his own program, when he left, Shagari introduced his own, then Buhari came with his own and it continued with Babangida, Shonekan, Abacha, Abdbulsalam, Obasanjo who introduced mass production of cassava and everybody went to farm, but there was no value addition, the Bank of Industry was not there to support the processors and the flour mills were not ready at that time to offtake the flour, this affected the program.
“When Goodluck Jonathan came in, he revived it, but some elites were not happy with that, so they frustrated the effort, but the then Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina took it upon himself and we were able to have bakers use 10 percent of cassava flour in baking, but when Jonathan left, that project died under Buhari. He introduced the Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP).
“This programme did not deal much with cassava, it did more of rice, sorghum, maize and livestock. All the cassava processing factories that were established during the Jonathan era became moribund because there was no fund to upgrade their processing capacity. So, the government has not really created an enabling environment for programs to thrive and there has not been continuity of government programs”, Maduka said.
He harped on the need for the federal government through the Ministry of Water Resources to open up more dams so that they can do all year round agriculture. Maduka said Nigeria must not rely on rain-fed agriculture if it must survive as a country.
He said the government can reserve the excess water coming as flood and use it for farming, while it can also develop land clearing projects across the states through the state governments and local governments.
“ALGON should see how the local government chairmen can set up farming activities in the communities by creating farm settlements in all the area councils, those that don’t have access to land will add value through cottage industries. This will create wealth and more food for the people.
“Some state governors are making efforts to support, we initiated a private sector driven project, and the people in Jigawa state backed out, stating that their state government has given them almost everything they needed, so they don’t need any other intervention. I have not been to Jigawa recently, but we learnt that the state government is doing enough for the farmers, but we will wait until the time of harvest to assess the impacts.
“We learnt that the Enugu state government also distributed seedlings and inputs to farmers recently, the Anambra state government is also doing the same. But it is not all about growing food, the value addition and preservation are key. Food may be grown, but during the time of harvest, there may be glut and there may be losses, so if at the end of the day you don’t have storage facilities and processing centres, it becomes a waste of investment,” he said.
The Chairman of Mokk Investment which is into cassava processing in Ogun State, Kunle Abdul blamed the state government for not having clear agricultural policies to complement the efforts of the Federal government.
“The reality is that the state governments have been lagging, the responsibility is on the state government, they own the land, we the farmers are on ground, if you apportion the blame, 70 per cent will go to the state governments. The states are not living up to their expectations, I am in Ogun state, and the state government has zero program on agriculture”, Abdul noted.
Hammed Jimoh, a food and nutrition security expert at Axon Agricultural Consulting, opined that the major problem of food crisis in Nigeria started when insecurity infiltrated all the farms and farmers killed, especially in Borno, Benue, Zamfara, Kaduna and many more.
He said in Borno, farmers who were supposed to harvest their crops were slaughtered by terrorists and it is a recurring incident across the country which has made farmers abandon their farms.
“If you look at where we have the insecurity hotspot in Nigeria today, these are where we have the highest level of food productivity in the past, Borno, Katsina, Kaduna and Benue. And Benue is judged the food basket of Nigeria but insecurity is also there too, farmers get kidnapped and they have to pay ransom.
Jimoh also said that climate change poses threat to food security in the country and Nigeria that rely majorly on rainfed agriculture find it difficult to utilize irrigation to produce food.
“The Nigerian agricultural sector is majorly relying on rain fed agriculture, today, the climate is ever changing. I have been informed that in the South Western part of Nigeria for about two months now it has not rained, in the north where they usually experience dryness in the past, it keeps raining there. So, the system is changing as opposed to what people are used to.
“So along as we rely on rain fed agriculture, we cannot get it right because it is going to affect our yield, so things need to be done in a different way.
“Another thing is the issue of extension services, many people don’t want to go to the field again, I can tell you that one extension worker is not available to 3000 farmers in Nigeria. There are farmers that have not seen an extension agent in their life, so all the research that is being done by our research institutes. Who are the people taking this knowledge to the farmers? Absolutely no one. So that is like the genesis of food insecurity in Nigeria”, he said.
Sunday Audu, a farmer in Kogi State, accused state governments of not making significant efforts in assisting the federal government in food production. He said the state governments play politics with agriculture.
Audu said there are no clear policies being implemented by these state governments other than sharing food, seeds and tractors that cannot be maintained to farmers, and at the end of the day the programs will fail.
He called for a sustainable agricultural policy between the state and Federal Government whereby the policies will outlive the initiators, while being sustained by successive governments for improved agricultural production.
Audu also advocated the deployment of a sustainable agricultural mechanization plan to attract investors and the youth into agriculture.
The Country Director of HarvestPlus, Dr Yusuf Dollah in his submission, said Nigeria is only experiencing high cost of food as a result fuel subsidy removal and inflation which has increased the prices of farm inputs, especially fertilizer.
He said if the government can reduce or subsidize fertilizer, food prices will eventually come down. He explained that about two years ago, with N350,000 a farmer can cultivate an hectare of maize, but currently, farmers require N1 million to cultivate the same hectare of maize.
“The food insecurity that we are witnessing now is not the way that we are reporting it. It is not that there is no food in the country, the food is there but the problem we have is purchasing power due to the high cost of the food. The cost of food items continues to go up and the purchasing power is not there. If you look at it, you will realize that everything has doubled more than 200 percent but salaries have not been increased, so lately, people are not able to buy food.
“If your salary was able to buy you a bag of rice those days, now that salary cannot buy you a bag of rice which is about N100,000 now. Just two years ago, a bag of maize was selling for N25,000 and now, a bag of maize is selling for N220,000.
“Another thing that made the cost of food go up is the subsidy removal, that has also made the cost of agricultural inputs rise by more than 200 per cent as well. Two years ago, you could buy fertilizer for N15,000 but today fertilizer is almost N50,000 per bag. You need about N350,000 to cultivate one hectare of maize then, but today, you need about N1 million to cultivate one hectare of maize.
“So, if a farmer invests N1 million in cultivating one hectare of maize, do you expect him to sell the same way he sold two years ago? It won’t be possible. So, we need to look at how we can put some subsidies on farm inputs, especially fertilizer.
“Secondly, there is no financial services for farmers, if you go to any financial bank and you want a loan facility, the kind of criteria they will bring out, you won’t be able to afford, even if you are able to afford it, maybe it will be at about 23 percent to 25 percent, and agriculturally, any loan that is not single digit, you will likely not break even,” he said.
The President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) Arc Kabiru Ibrahim maintained that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through the Anchor Borrowers Program (ABP) pushed Nigeria into the current inflation.
He explained that the prime anchors who claimed they have farmers under them, collected money from the CBN which was supposed to be used to support farmers to produce food, instead, they used the money to buy up the already produced food in the market.
“I want to blame the CBN through the ABP. At any time the harvest is on, prices normally come down, those days have gone, from 2016, we have not had that simply because of the action of the CBN which caused turbulence in the things that we shouldn’t do when there is inflation and things we should do when prices are low.
“There is what is called guaranteed minimum price where farmers are encouraged to go back to the farm and produce because whatever they produce will be bought at fair prices so that they can make profit, but since the intervention of the CBN ABP through the prime anchors, we lost that.”
“The prime anchor were friends to the CBN, especially the development finance, they were given a lot of money and they came with a number of farmers that were under their control and these money were supposed to go to the farmers in form of inputs, labour and they will pay back the prime anchors in kind, but we found out that these prime anchors actually went to the market and bought products, thereby exacerbating inflation”, he explained.
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