Stakeholders lament Nigeria’s food wastage amid hunger
Chima Azubuike
About N3.5trillion is said to have been lost annually to post-harvest losses across 774 local government areas and 36 states of the Federation.
Making this disclosure in a communique at the end of two-day on National Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2023 Agriculture Budget organised by ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Oxfam, and ONE Campaign, the Department of Agriculture & Rural Development of the
ECOWAS COMMISSION, which was monitored virtually by our correspondent.
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The group lamented the huge losses, stressing that it was avoidable with concerted effort by responsible agencies of government.
The Communique partly read, “Nigeria’s food import bill is increasing & the highest imports of agricultural goods into the country was recorded in 2021, as products valued at N2.74tn were imported while Our post-harvest losses is estimated at N3.5 trillion annually with each state and LGA
having its own large share.
“Despite the challenges facing the Nigerian agricultural sector, the sector remains the largest contributor to Nigeria’s GDP in 2nd quarter 2022 at 23.3%; beyond the contributions of Trade (16.8%), Telecommunication (15%), Manufacturing (8.7%) and the Oil and Gas sector (6.3%). The agricultural sector has the largest potential to lead
millions of Nigerians out of poverty. Thus, the sector should be given utmost priority in national economic policies and national and subnational budgets.”
The group also bemoaned the lingering poor release of funds, stressing that aside poor agricultural financing, security challenges were some of the challenges facing the sector.
“Regrettably, the late releases of fund to the sector continues to impede the capacity of Federal and State governments to drive socio-economic development including food and nutrition security within the policy thrust of the diversification of the economy
towards agriculture.
“Though the capital projects utilisation in the agriculture sector in 2021 seems to have improved significantly, but due to late budget releases, it can hardly be said that these allocations largely supported smallholder farmers especially women who are still
confronted with challenges of the very limited access to credits, farm insecurity in the form of banditry and herders-farmers clashes, natural disasters, late budget releases and crowd-outs by political farmers and contractors who are the budget first liners.
“Nigeria’s agricultural sector is largely conventional farming that depends largely on toxic chemical pesticides. Government budget spending through the FMARD and the CBN Farmer’s Anchor Borrower programs favour chemical pesticides over organic
bio-agro inputs, even though these toxic pesticides are highly hazardous to humans, the environment, and biodiversity and cause a loss in foreign revenue resulting in food
export rejection,” the stakeholders said.
According to the stakeholders, establishment of storage facilities around the rural areas were imperative in ending post-harvest, stressing the need for state and local governments to develop enabling laws to protect Smallholder farmers.
The communique added, “Small modular processing and storage facilities in communities based on different
commodities should be a good approach to reducing our post-harvest losses in the 2023 agriculture budget and subsequent years, as the larger Staple Crops Processing Zones (SCPZ) are most likely not to reach remote areas.
“Considering the agricultural risk; rising insecurity in farms; farm raiding, cattle
destructions, and kidnappers, climate and other natural disasters, farmers are not encouraged to continue farm practices without risk covers. Hence, both Federal and subnational governments should promote the enrolment of agricultural insurance
policies for smallholder farmers, while challenging the poor security issues that
threatens our farms.
“States should develop their own Agricultural Investment Plan. This will enable the efforts at the states and local government levels to be recognised in the overall determination of the country’s commitment to the CAADP and enable accurate data for the Biennial Review (BR) Reporting.
“FMARD should begin to develop pesticide policies and legislation that ensure that the most toxic pesticides are prohibited, and phased out in Nigeria, and a significant shift made towards sustainable farm systems like agroecology. To achieve this, the government needs to develop a safe sustainable food strategy that reduces the use of highly toxic synthetic chemical pesticides by 50% by 2030; 25% by 2040, a maximum of 5% by 2050 and strong support to be given to farmers in their transition towards agroecology.”
