Experts in the Nigerian agriculture space have called for increased funding, promotion of value addition among farmers to strengthen governments drive towards food security.
Speaking during the ongoing Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja, the experts agreed that it has become imperative for Nigeria to focus on increasing food production as the world get more insulin in terms of food supply chain.
According to Omoboyode Olusanya, CEO, Flour Mills of Nigeria, the country has consistently been an importer of foods, which is unsustainable at the long run. He explained that despite efforts to promote domestic production of rice and maize, food importation continues to rise.
“In the last few years, Nigeria has done well in maize and rice production and yet National Bureau of statistics data shows that food import grew by 41 percent. This is a great challenge as we continue to see rise in food import,” he said. “Also, with the Russian/Ukraine crisis, we have seen a significant increase in commodity prices and this has led to a crunch in the income of the common Nigerian.”
For him, it is important that farmers look at the nutrition content of food produced. Foods should be nutritious even in the effort to ensure they are affordable, he said.
In his remark, Olurotimi Arigbede, the CFO of ThriveAgric said despite the potential for value addition, the agriculture sector has remained unprioritised and constrained by many problems.
Arigbede decried budgetary allocation to the sector, which has remained under two percent in seven years.
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According to him, deliberate efforts must be made by relevant stakeholders to resolve and remove the stumbling blocks in the sector, thereby unlocking the wealthy potential of the sector.
“We have abundant untapped resources and historical data on the contribution of Agriculture sector presents it as a viable and sustainable alternative for a prosperous economy,” he said.
Ayoola Fatona, director, Agric insurance at Leadway, stressed on the need for increased value addition of products both for domestic market and exports. He noted that there had been a lot of rejection of goods for exports as they fail to meet international standards.
“There has been a lot of rejection of exports. The biggest challenge is that Nigeria commodities are no long competitive in the export market and this also bothers on issues of high import tariff, poor infrastructure, power, among others,” he said. “We urgently need to review our import tariff system, especially with the view of AfCFTA.”
He also suggested taxation of exporters of raw commodities in a bid to encourage value addition and make Nigerian products more acceptable.
