By Chinyere Anyanwu [email protected]
The outgoing year wasmarked by a mixture of highs and lows for Nigeria’s agriculture sector.
With a new minister in the person of Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar appointed to head the ministry towards the tail end of 2021, hopes were raised for a more productive and prosperous year.
Precisely in January 2022, the sector witnessed the unveiling of the Abuja rice pyramids by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The 13 rice pyramids comprising 1.2 million units of 100kg bags of rice were said to be the biggest on the continent with each of the pyramids containing about 115,000 bags of 100kg each.
The president had said at the unveiling of the rice pyramids that, “the measure will aid Nigeria’s efforts at reducing the price of rice in the markets.”
Regrettably, that has not resulted in massive supply that would have brought about a reduction in prices of the commodity. Currently, a 50kg bag of locally produced rice sells for between N38,000 and N41,000 as against the N28,000 to N30,000 they sold months before the launch of the rice pyramids.
A major highpoint that affected the agriculture sector in 2022 had been the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war which started in February. The two countries which are major suppliers of grains like wheat, as well as agro-input to more than 30 countries of the world including Nigeria have been embrioled in a bitter war that has disrupted the supply change of the Black Sea zone.
At the outset of the war, the seaports of the countries were shut, making it impossible for countries that depend on them for food and agro-input like fertiliser, to get supplies. This, in effect, resulted in a reduction in agricultural production and food supply.
According to the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, during a Security Council Meeting in May, “the Russian Federation’s invasion of its neighbour has effectively ended Ukraine’s food exports, with price increases of up to 30 per cent for staple foods threatening people in countries across Africa and the Middle East. When a country like Ukraine, which provides food for 400 million people, is out of the market, it creates market volatility.”
Still on the impact of the Russia/Ukraine war, David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), said “36 countries import more than 50 per cent of grain from this region. Failure to open the ports in the Odessa region is a declaration of war on global food security.”
Another major incident this year which affected the agriculture sector adversely was the widespread flooding across the country, especially in the farming states and communities. The toll taken on the sector can only be imagined as over 569,251 hectares of farmlands were destroyed by floods in addition to over 600 lives lost.
The heavy flooding which started in early September and ended in October, has seen several farming communities and families losing their homes and means of livelihood. The floods blocked or washed away roads, thereby making it extremely difficult to transport produce to markets and that at greater costs than ever. Farmers said 20 per cent of their goods got spoilt in transit owing to the situation.
Expressing concern over the flooding challenge, the National President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Kabir Ibrahim, had noted that, “Some farmers have lost close to 75 per cent of everything planted this year. So many farmers have lost the entire plantation that they cultivated. Jigawa State is a typical example. Most of the rice farms there were completely lost and this is the situation in many other states.”
Destruction of crops on farmlands was not the only devastation caused by the flood; warehoused grains in the flooded regions were also destroyed.
The National Public Relations Officer, National Wheat Farmers, Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria, Tola Ogunnubi, lamented that the floods affected warehouses where wheat produce was stored.
Insecurity is still having an impact on food production as bandits are still invading farmlands and disrupting farming activities.
The ongoing fuel scarcity has hit the food sector in no small measure as prices of food items have skyrocketed owing to increased cost of transporting produce from farms to the markets.
Assessing the year in review, a stakeholder, Emmanuel Ijewere, the Vice President, National Agribusiness Group (NABG), though pained by the losses and sufferings inflicted on Nigerian food producers by the recent floods that ravaged most parts of the country, gives kudos to them for their doggedness in ensuring food availability despite all they have to go through in doing so.
Ijewere said, “the champions of 2022 have been the long-suffering farmers who continue against all odds to provide food for us at a reasonable price; all those transporters who, despite the terrible roads, still manage to deliver goods to people; those market women who help to distribute the food to the consumers; these are the champions. When you look at all the three of them, they represent part of the poverty stricken people of Nigeria yet they continue to feed us.”
He further stated that, “what we are hearing about shortage of food this year because of the massive floods experienced this year was mitigated by the extra efforts of these farmers even against the insecurity ravaging the land.”
He concluded by saying: “If things continue this way next year, since we won’t have foreign exchange to import food like we always do, we will see a very dire situation because the farmers may be absolutely helpless. Unless something is done and done quickly.”
Another stakeholder who spoke on the performance of the agriculture sector in 2022, Babatunde Olarewaju, the Lead Strategist at Futux Agric Consult Ltd, scored the low.
According to Olarewaju, “the sector did very poorly this year. Food inflation this year is over 25 per cent because of the various challenges besetting the sector, one of which was the Russia/Ukraine war that has hampered accessibility to fertiliser. It’s from Russia they get MOT used in the production of NPK fertiliser. The price of fertiliser currently is about N30,000 and above for a bag, something that was selling for N12,000 to N14,000 few months ago.
“This has, in effect, increased the cost of production, and farmers are reducing their scale of production. For example, a farmer who was producing four hectares before is now producing one acre because the cost of production is increasing. A farmer who was using two bags of fertiliser before, now that money can only buy one bag and because he does not have access to finance, he has to go with either one or half bag. So productivity is becoming very low and government intervention is not coming.”
