Kano small scale rice farmers face post-harvest price crisis

Small scale rice farmers, who began the harvest of the commodity in Kano state, one of Nigeria most active agricultural belt, may experience difficulties in getting appropriate price for their commodity.

The reason is connected with challenge of insufficient storage facilities which is pushing the farmers to sell off their product at a give- away price to commodity merchants.

Rice farmers in the state are expected to be harvest over 1.2 metric tonnes of pad rice between now, and the end of year, in the state. At the moment, the state can only boost about five medium scale rice processing plants, and some small-scale rice processing plants scattered across the 44 Local Government Areas of the state.

BusinessDay observed at some of the Farm- Gates situated in Kura farming community visited Tuesday that most of the farmers harvesting their pad rice are already offering them for sale to rice merchants. Most of the farmers, who spoke on the development, attributed their action to their inability to store the harvested product on a long time.

Agricultural commodity experts are predicting that the on-going delivery of the harvested pad rice to the open market may precipitate over supply of the commodity to the markets, which could affect it buying price. The situation is expected to get worst as more of the small holder farmers and large scale producers of the commodity in the empowered by the Kano state government through the CBN special rice intervention programme starts delivering more pad rice to the open market.

Presently, 50 kg bag of price of locally processed rice popularly known as ‘Kura Rice’ sells at N30,000, with the anticipated glut in the market the price may experience a downward movement soon. Attempt made to get the view stakeholders in the rice business in the state on the development did not succeed as most of them refused to response to several telephone calls made to them.