Nigeria’s food future is at a pivotal moment. In a significant development, the government recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Brazilian meatpacker JBS for a $2.5 billion investment in the country’s industrial animal production system.
The plan includes the construction of poultry, cattle, and pork factories, a move heralded by the government as a step toward boosting the economy and addressing Nigeria’s growing food needs.
However, this deal represents a dangerous leap in the wrong direction, with far-reaching consequences. The partnership threatens to undermine Nigeria’s food sovereignty and perpetuate the ecological and social harm caused by industrialised farming.
To protect the health of the nation and its people, Nigeria must resist this industrial path and instead invest in a food system rooted in equity, sustainability, and people’s rights to food sovereignty.
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A license to exploit
The industrial model of farming, fisheries, and livestock management, epitomised by companies like JBS, undermines food sovereignty—the idea that communities should control their food systems. It commodifies food and animals, centralises control, and prioritises profits over people’s rights to healthy, culturally appropriate, and nutritious food.
The consequences are far-reaching: environmental degradation, animal suffering, public health crises, and deepening inequalities.
Consider Nigeria’s growing reliance on industrial agriculture: just four multinational corporations control over two-thirds of global seed sales, pushing genetically modified (GM) seeds that marginalise local seed varieties.
The introduction of GMs into Nigeria’s agricultural systems is eroding Indigenous food practices, posing significant threats to both food sovereignty and public health.
Despite producing large quantities of crops like maize, Nigeria remains a food-deficit nation, with millions facing hunger annually. Similarly, a shift toward industrialised production in the meat and poultry sectors will further exacerbate food insecurity rather than alleviating it.
Perhaps most troubling is the impact on smallholder farmers, the backbone of Nigeria’s agricultural sector. The Green Revolution, led by entities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), has already demonstrated the failure of industrial agriculture to deliver on its promises.
Despite billions in subsidies, smallholders remain impoverished, their livelihoods undermined by high input costs and reliance on chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
AGRA’s model has failed to alleviate food insecurity and entrenched corporate control over food systems, leaving smallholder farmers at the mercy of multinational agribusinesses.
Similarly, in the industrial animal agriculture sector, smallholder farmers in developing countries have had to sign contracts with multinational meat and dairy corporations, requiring heavy investments, leading to debt and low incomes.
Nigeria seems poised to emulate this model in the animal agriculture sector through JBS, leading to the same devastating consequences.
A threat to public health, animal welfare, and climate
The industrial meat production JBS promotes also contributes to a number of ecological and public health crises. Industrial livestock production drives significant environmental degradation through deforestation, soil depletion, and water contamination.
In addition, industrialised animal agriculture subjects billions of animals to suffering, confinement, mutilation, and denied natural behaviours, leading to the overuse of antibiotics to boost growth and prevent disease in animals kept in cruel and deplorable conditions.
This is contributing to the spread of resistant bacteria in meat and waterways, posing a serious public health threat. Nigeria faces a growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis; a recent study found resistant bacteria in Nigerian livestock, highlighting the risks of industrial animal agriculture.
Factory farms are also significant sources of zoonotic diseases—diseases that jump from animals to humans—a risk that will only increase with the expansion of industrial meat production.
This industrial model also exacerbates climate change, with livestock accounting for a substantial portion of Nigeria’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The increase in land cleared for industrial feed production, such as maize and soybeans, compounds this issue. It also intensifies competition for land and resources, further straining systems already under pressure from climate change.
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Equitable, humane, and sustainable food systems through agroecology offer truly sustainable solutions:
The real solution to Nigeria’s food crisis lies not in the hands of corporations like JBS but in agroecology—a farming system that supports smallholder farmers, ensures food sovereignty, and promotes animal welfare and sustainable land and resource use.
Agroecology emphasises local food systems, ecological practices, and the empowerment of communities. By investing in agroecology, Nigeria could not only improve food security but also restore biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and foster greater resilience against future shocks.
Agroecological practices have been shown to increase yields while reducing environmental damage, offering a true pathway to a sustainable food future for Nigeria.
The benefits of agroecology go beyond food production. It also provides opportunities for gender equity and social justice. In Nigeria, where 60-79 percent of the agricultural workforce is female but land ownership remains overwhelmingly male-dominated, agroecology can be a powerful tool for empowering women and marginalised communities.
By ensuring equitable access to land and resources, agroecology can provide women and youth with opportunities to contribute to sustainable food systems and break the cycle of poverty.
Nigeria has a choice: to continue down the path of industrial food production, which promises short-term economic gains but at a great cost to public health, the environment, and food sovereignty, or to invest in a just transition to agroecology—a future where food systems are equitable, humane, and sustainable.
The MoU with JBS is a stark reminder of the risks of prioritising corporate profit over the health of citizens, the environment, and food sovereignty.
The future of Nigeria’s food system should be determined by its people, not by foreign interests that have no stake in the country’s long-term well-being.
The Nigerian movement for a just transition towards an equitable, humane, and sustainable food system through agroecology calls on the Nigerian government to cancel its MoU with JBS and resist the allure of industrial agriculture.
Instead, the government should embrace a food system where the right to food sovereignty is respected and places people, animals, and the environment at its heart—not multinational corporations.
Elujulo is the executive director of Youth in Agroecology and Restoration Network.
Williams is the Africa regional director of World Animal Protection.
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