• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

Farmers say lockdown hampering essential inputs supply

Preparations for this year’s planting season may have started in some parts of Nigeria, particularly in the South, but if farmers fail to get inputs such as seeds and fertilisers in time, the country could be faced with a food crisis whenever the coronavirus pandemic is over.

Lagos, Ogun, and Abuja are home to about 5 million farmers who are currently in need of key inputs as they commence clearing, tilling and ploughing of their farmlands for the 2020 planting season, but the current implementation of a 14-day lockdown in these states by the Federal Government to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus is disrupting the flow of direly needed inputs to these farmers, experts say.

The experts say any form of obstruction in the production and distribution of seeds, fertilisers, herbicides, and other agro-chemicals could adversely impact farming activities and, by extension, food production.
“As far as agriculture (in Nigeria) is concerned, this is the time for planting in some places and this is already disrupted,” Matthew Omidiji, MD, Premier Seeds Limited, told BusinessDay.

Since President Muhammadu Buhari’s national broadcast on Sunday announcing the lockdown of Lagos, Abuja and Ogun, input producers and suppliers in these places have been at a loss as to how they can get the essential items to farmers without harassment from law enforcement officers. Added to this, different state governments had announced their own restrictions on movement, imposing curfews, and even outright closure of their borders to inflow or outflow of human and material traffic.

Tunde Kayode, GM/group head of farm inputs, Elephant Group plc, told BusinessDay that there have been reports from stakeholders who have input consignment but cannot move, because transporters are not allowing their trucks to leave the yards. He added that “even for areas not affected by lockdown, they say no because they don’t want to be stranded”.

Kayode said “farming by nature has its logistics side, so if inputs cannot get to the end user at the appropriate time, there’s no gainsaying it is going to affect the entire chain”.

“Some of our members have been arrested for distributing and selling fertilisers and seeds to farmers already in some states that only gave the stay-at-home directives, you can now imagine our situation with the total lockdown in Lagos and Abuja,” Kabiru Fara, president, Nigerian Agro Inputs Dealers Association of Nigeria (NAIDA), said in a response to questions.

“We were not specifically included on the essential service exemption lockdown list announced by the president and this is dangerous for us as a country,” Fara said.

AfricanFarmer Mogaji, head, agribusiness group, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), told BusinessDay that Nigeria was not producing enough currently and so could not afford anything that would jeopardise its food security quest.

“To see that happen, we must include producers, suppliers, and distributors of agro-inputs in the exclusion list because agriculture is timely,” said Mogaji, who is also the CEO of FarmCredit.

Kabiru Ibrahim, president, All Farmers Association of Nigeria, who spoke to BusinessDay on phone from Katsina, said, “We consider movement of agricultural inputs as essential and those are to be allowed. Also, day-old chicks moving from one part of the country to another, once marked as what they really are, would be allowed passage.”

However, Ezekiel Ibrahim, president, Poultry Association of Nigeria, had raised an alarm in a statement sent to BusinessDay, saying “the situation of the poultry products market is not stable at the moment”.

He explained in the statement that if urgent steps were not taken to remove the restriction on the movement of vehicles conveying poultry products like day-old-chicks (DOCs), meat and eggs, poultry feeds and drugs, “the poultry industry which is on the path of becoming the mainstay of the Nigerian livestock industry might be completely destroyed”.

Even as human beings require food to stay healthy and function, farmers also need the essential inputs (such as seeds, fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides) in order for them to produce food that will be consumed by the populace. While it is unfortunate that COVID-19 arrived and necessitated lockdowns at the beginning of the new farming season, some stakeholders in the sector fear hunger may be the next pandemic, unless supply of input gets the required attention.

“Definitely there is going to be scarcity of food next year,” said Omidiji of Premier Seeds. “This is the time we should be distributing seeds to farmers but cannot do anything. Farmers cannot get the lost time back and it is only God that can amend things for us.”

But Femi Oke, chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Lagos chapter, told BusinessDay that the farmers in the state “have been getting all the inputs we need amid the coronavirus spread”.

He, however, said the situation might change if the inputs providers are not included in the lockdown exemption list.

“We would want the government to make clarity of the inclusion of inputs producers, distributors and retailers in the lockdown exclusion list so as not to obstruct our farming operations,” Oke said.

Nigeria has an estimated population of 200 million people who must be fed with staples ranging from rice, beans, tomatoes, maize, among others. Yet, there is still much demand-supply gap in most of the staple foods, so any form of obstruction on farming activities will trigger scarcity and hike in food prices.

BusinessDay survey of Mile 12 and Ketu food markets on Monday, hours before the implementation of the lockdown, showed that prices of major food items, including tomatoes and garri, had increased by about 10 percent.

 

JOSEPHINE OKOJIE & CALEB OJEWALE