Despite federal government efforts to boost the production of local staples, the average prices of garri, bread and yam surged the most in June 2024, data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows.
The data showed that prices of garri, bread, and yam, among other food items were major contributors to the headline in June and pushing Nigeria’s food inflation rate to 40.87 in June 2024 from 40.66 percent in the preceding month.
Food prices in the country have continued to make rapid climbs owing to a combination of issues ranging from worsening insecurity, climate change, surge in input prices and volatile naira.
BusinessDay findings show that the price of a painter of yellow garri now sells for an average of N4,000 as against N3,000 sold in March 2024, while a slice of bread now sells for an average of N1,500 from N800 last year.
Read also: Harvests in havoc: How insecurity is contributing to Nigeria’s food inflation
Also, prices of yams have increased by 66.67 percent in Lagos from an average of N3,000 for a tuber in February to an average of N5,000 in June 2024.
Jude Obi, president of the Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria, said many farmers do not cultivate in places where they usually grow food owing to the worsening insecurity in the country, which is responsible for soaring food prices.
“The government must address the issue of insecurity if it is serious about food security and stabilisation of prices,” Obi, the general secretary of the Soil Science Society of Nigeria, said.
The NBS noted that food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Edo State at 47.34 percent, followed by Kogi at 46.37 percent, and Cross River at 45.28 percent. While Nasarawa at 34.31 percent, Bauchi at 34.78 percent and Adamawa at 35.96 percent, were the states with the lowest food inflation in the month under review.
Nigeria’s headline inflation hit a 28-year high of 34.19 percent in June 2024, mainly driven by food inflation which is a major driver of headline inflation, according to the NBS.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says Nigeria is the largest producer and consumer of cassava in the world and churns out 60.8 million metric tonnes of cassava in 2022.
The production of the tubers in 2023, according to farmers, was hampered by climate change impact, worsening insecurity and driving skyrocketing garri prices in markets around the country.
To halt the continuous surge in food prices across the country and soften the blow of accelerating inflation putting a strain on households incomes, experts say the government must address issues hindering production and cutting supply.
According to the experts, the federal government will have to make a concerted effort to stem insecurity, drastically reduce post-harvest losses, fix structural deficiencies across the value chain and increase technology usage on farms to halt the current surge in food prices.
“The government of the day is out saying all sorts of things on how it intends to stabilise food prices and boost food production, yet no one is looking at the entire value chain,” said AfricanFarmer Mogaji, chief executive officer of X-Ray Consulting.
“No one is looking at addressing the challenges of transportation and storage which render most agricultural produce useless,” he noted.
