Obstacles farmers battle with as 2023 ends today

Many Nigerian farmers who faced numerous obstacles that not only brought many down but also severely damaged numerous agro-economy subsectors in the nation will not quickly forget the year 2023 as it wraps up today.

Naira redesign

Due to the naira redesign cash shortage, most farmers were forced to sell their produce at discounts in order to survive as customers were unable to obtain the cash necessary to buy from them.

The policy, which came into force during the harvest season, left farmers bankrupt and unable to manage their farms efficiently.

People from neighbouring countries like Chad, Niger, Benin Republic and Central Africa took advantage of the inexpensive prices of grains and flocked into the country to mop them up.

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Due to the nation’s cash shortage, poultry producers were the ones most negatively impacted by the policy, with estimates of lost eggs worth over N30 billion.

Poultry farmers in the nation have lost approximately 15 million crates of eggs that were unsold or destroyed, according to the Poultry Association of Nigeria’s (PAN’s) Director General (DG), Onallo S. Akpa, who provided a breakdown of the losses.

Since the first week of February, 2023, farmers have lost lots of eggs, which have made operations in the poultry industry more challenging due to the near total absence of naira notes needed for everyday transactions.

Subsidy removal

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared that “subsidy is gone” in his inaugural speech on May 29. The cost of petrol increased instantly from N195 to N615 per litre.

The shock caused immediate ripple effects in a number of businesses, most notably the transportation and manufacturing, where prices of goods and services immediately increased.

Since then, the costs of practically all agricultural inputs, including fertiliser, seeds and agrochemicals, have increased by more than 50 per cent, leaving many farmers in a precarious situation due to sharp increases in the prices of cereals, feeds and other commodities.

Farmers were just starting to harvest during the wet season when the ban was implemented. The price of fertiliser increased from N16,000 to N23,000 and then N26,000, making it unaffordable for many farmers to purchase the necessary fertiliser for crop development.

Fuel prices have driven off a large number of dry-season farmers, and many more have reduced their farms to sizes that are more manageable.

Insecurity in farming communities

Many farmers will also recall 2023 as one of the bloodiest years since so many farming communities, especially in significant grain-producing regions, were unable to access their farms during harvest. The communities most affected by the fatal confrontations that claimed many farmers’ lives are Katsina, Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Taraba, and Zamfara.

Because production states like the Plateau, Kaduna and Taraba were most affected, experts projected a drop in the availability of grains, notably maize.

As 2023 comes to a conclusion today, the scenario persists in many farming regions and has a significant detrimental influence on irrigation farming.

Anchor borrower saga

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) launched the Anchor Borrower Programme (ABP) in November, 2015, to provide funding for higher agricultural output in Nigeria.

While some regions of the nation have reported accomplishments, the programme encountered difficulties since some of the beneficiaries were unable to return the loans when they were due.

President Tinubu set a deadline this year for federal government agencies working with law enforcement to retrieve billions of naira that had been loaned to rice farmers since 2018.

Recall that Monday, September 18, 2023, was the deadline that President Tinubu set for the funds to be recovered.

A few officials who were tasked with allocating the funds and agricultural inputs were also accused of diverting some.

Only about N546bn of the N1.1trn that the CBN had given out to ABP recipients since the programmes inception was refunded, it was discovered.

It is anticipated that defaulting farmers and officials who misappropriated the funds will pay back more than N577bn following President Tinubu’s “decree”.

However, recovering the loans from the farmers have been the major issue to the apex bank, as all efforts to retrieve the money through the Nigerian Rice Farmers Association (RIFAN) had yielded little result.

The federal government gave RIFAN instructions to use all available means to retrieve the loans that were disbursed throughout the 2018-2019, 2020-2021 cropping seasons.

As the year ends today, nothing more has been said since that directive and even the RIFAN has been very circumspect about the amount that has really been collected and the amount that has not yet been retrieved.

Again, cost of grains, feeds

Since 2019, the price of important crops such as maize and soya beans, which are used in the feed business, has skyrocketed. It resulted in high feed costs, notably for the poultry and fishery farming.

The average price of chicken feed in Nigeria has risen by at least 168% in the last three years, highlighting the magnitude of Nigeria’s food inflation since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

A 25kg poultry feed, primarily composed of wheat, millet, soybean, and maize, increased in price on average from N3,600 in 2019 to between N10,000 and N14,000 in November, 2023.

Additionally, experts believe that 2024 may prove to be yet another challenging year due to the fact that grain prices, even at harvest, continued to rise.