The late planting season and continuous disruptions of farming activities by armed bandits may have led to the marginal decline of 1.38 percentage points to 1.79 percent in the second quarter of 2019, analysts say.
Gross Domestic Production ( GDP) Figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on September 3, indicates that the agricultural sector recorded negative growth of 1.38 percentage points to 1.79 percent in the second quarter(q) of 2019 from 3.17 percent reported in q1 2019. But it grew marginally by 0.6 percentage points on a on a year on year basis.
“We believe this stemmed from disruptions to farming activities in April and May by armed bandits in the North which invariably led to shortage of crops and increased food prices in both months as evidenced in inflation numbers. Nonetheless, recent updates from these regions shows there’s been improvement in recent months,” a report by ARM Research stated.
Abiodun Olorundenro, Operations Manager, Aquashoots Nigeria said that farmers in the major food producing states like Taraba, Benue, Kastina and others had to run away from their farmlands which had an impact on food production.
“Also, the late rains played a part to it. The rains did not come early so farmers planted late. What determines planting season is weather condition.
For example in the northern part of the country where stable foods are planted, the rains are just starting now,” Olorundenro further said.
In Nigeria, there are two distinct seasons namely; rainy and dry season. While the rainy season starts in April and ends in October with generally lower temperatures, the dry season starts off in November and ends in March.
And also planting season varies in the country. In the Northern part, it starts around July-august while the Southern region, it starts around ending March- April.
Earlier in the year, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) which undertakes Seasonal Rainfall Prediction (SRP) predicted that the country is expected to experience below normal- to-normal rainfall season.
“The 2019 Seasonal rainfall prediction by Nimet is based on a warm ENSO phase (El Nino year) as predicted by the international ENSO prediction centres,”
“Since there is a very high probability of a warm phase persisting from January to July-august-september season, it is expected that the predominant warm phase will moderately suppress rainfall in the country during this period particularly in the North while normal rainfall is expected from the predicted neutral phase towards the end of the season from September 2019,” the Agency stated in its website.
The sector contributed 22.82 percent to total GDP in real terms, lower than the contribution in the second quarter of 2018 but higher than the first quarter of 2019 which stood at 22.8 percent and 21.89 percent respectively.
“The security issues is still affecting that sector, there has been a lot of kidnaping in that sector. People are afraid to go their farms,” Ayo Akinwunmi at FSDH Merchant Bank said.
“And also even though we had delayed rains in that period, it is still no excuse as we should be able to have enough sufficient irrigation systems in the country. We are not the only ones facing the late weather conditions,” Akinwunmi further added.
There are four sub-activities that make up the Agric sector are Crop production, Livestock, Forestry and Fishing. Forestry contributed the most, followed by crop production, fishing and livestock.
Crop production sector grew by 1.94 percent in Q2 2019 from 3.27 percent in Q1 2019 and 2.48 percent in Q4 2018. Livestock contracted by -0.01 percent in Q2 2019 from 0.88 percent in Q1 2019 and 2.35 percent in Q4 2018.
Forestry grew by 3.23 percent in Q2 2019 from 2.19 percent in Q1 2019 and 1.73 percent in Q4 2018 and Fishing grew by 1.09 perecnt in Q2 2019 from 7.09 percent in Q1 2019 and 1.97 percent in Q4 2018.
