A weary Nigerian population that has over four months endured the economic siege brought by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is facing an even harsher reality of food shortage. The scarcity of food will not only be about availability, but also affordability, which would further strain finances for millions of people whose incomes have already been hit by the pandemic.
People dealing with pay cuts, job losses, and higher costs of living may soon have to increase their feeding costs, an essential part of human existence even as some already resorted to rationing their food intake. Even with the cost of food that appears bound to increase, its supply will still not be able to meet demand of Nigeria’s 200 million population.
Many farmers across the country were unable to commence this year’s planting season at the right time due to movement restrictions that prevented them from accessing inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and even physical access to their farms. By the time some were able to get critical inputs, they could only cross their fingers and hope for the best, even though climate, which determines seasons does not reckon much with hope but the right actions at the right time.
“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 in April when the lockdown started. “Definitely, there is going to be scarcity of food next year,” he said.
Though agriculture was supposed to enjoy some privileges and get exemptions from the restrictions, the situation did not improve satisfactorily in the weeks and months that followed.
“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,” Tunde Kayode, GM/group head of Farm Inputs, Elephant Group plc, says.
Farmers continued to count losses owing to the pandemic and they now fear it could trigger a food crisis in Africa’s most populous nation by 2021, as production declines. From crops to livestock, farmers are recording significant declines in productivity, which at harvest will reveal serious food shortages in the country.
“I had to sell all my broiler birds at half their prices during the lockdown because I could not continue to feed them after four months,” Dayo Gawati, chief executive, Fdot Farms, states.
“Now, my poultry cage is empty and I can’t afford to buy enough day-old chicks because of the revenue loss I suffered earlier from the pandemic,” Gawati says, saying he could only afford to buy 400 day-old chicks which are less than a third of what he had pre-COVID-19.
Like Gawati, other farmers hinge the expectation of a food crisis next year on the obstruction of the country’s fragmented farming supply chain, which has led to spike in input prices.
“The obstruction in the supply chain owing to the pandemic is responsible for the hike in food prices across the country,” notes Ibrahim Kabriu, national president, All Farmers Association of Nigeria. “If we fail to have bumper harvest this year for most crops, 2021 will be a very tough year for Nigerians because prices are going to escalate further when there is a shortfall in food production”.
He notes, “Farmers couldn’t access key inputs during the lockdown when the planting season commenced but the situation has changed.”
Nigeria is already approaching the peak period of the rainy season – June through November— when flooding usually submerges and destroys crops. If this happens, food shortages will be further heightened.
“There will be a 10 or 12 percent reduction in farm produce this year, and if the coronavirus continues to spread to rural communities the reduction might get to 25 percent,” Ayodeji Balogun, country manager, AFEX Commodities Exchange Limited, predicts.
“We need to declare a state of emergency on the cultivation of wet farming and ensure that there is free movement of trucks conveying food on the roads and ports,” Balogun says.
An earlier analysis of projections by national leaders of some agricultural commodity producers by BusinessDay shows productivity this year could reduce by an average of up to 47.5 percent, as the COVID-19 induced lockdowns restricted farmers from engaging in different production activities.
Maize, Wheat, Soybean, Poultry were projected to decline between 30 and 70 percent, even though Rice and Cassava growers claim they do not expect any decline in output, and in fact, possible increments.
In all of this, availability of fertiliser has remained an uphill task, with prices more than doubled across the country. From N5,500, which should be the cost of a bag of fertiliser on account of the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative, the input now sells for as much as N13,000 when BusinessDay made enquiries in the farming community of Ketu-Epe in Lagos.
Indorama, a leading fertiliser producer, was reported to have shut down during the lockdown, owing to operational challenges, a claim the company stated was untrue.
Jossy Nkkwocha, Indorama’ spokesman, told BusinessDay the fertilizer plant did not shut down despite the lockdown. According to Nkkwocha, an average of 90 trucks load at Indorama at Eleme every day taking away 54,000 bags of 50kg fertilizers. He said the plant was able and ready to meet all demands but said any decline would be due to drop in demand.
However, Uche Orji, CEO, Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), which oversees importation of raw materials for fertiliser production in the country, told BusinessDay that Indorama indeed shut down on June 1, and re-opened temporarily on June 15, and only recently started producing again after what he described as a full month of shutdown.
BusinessDay gathers that three people died in Indorama, leading to a shutdown of all their factories in the middle of May. This made the company to evacuate almost 350 personnel as they could not work. The deaths in the plant, attributed to COVID-19, necessitated the shutdown, which invariably created some setback in fertiliser production and supply.
The shutdown at Indorama, according to Orji, “created a bit of setback” in fertiliser availability. However, he said more than 6 million bags of fertiliser had already been produced and sold, with a plan for 12 million bags this year, which may now be difficult to achieve as the planting season is already at its peak.
“We have run this programme for 3 years and never had any shortage; the shutdown is what has affected the programme so far, especially with what happened at Indorama,” Orji said.
“The Indorama thing is the biggest problem, and frankly we need to find a way to solve this problem,” Orji said. The company’s inability to process at capacity (even though it denies this), has severely impacted availability of fertiliser for this year’s planting season, and may now be too late to supply farmers. Unless farmers find a way of multiplying their farm harvests, a food shortage awaits the country in 2021.
Ignatius Chukwu, Onyinye Nwachukwu, Odinaka Anudu, Josephine Okojie & Caleb Ojewale
