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WHY FARMERS ARE SHIFTING TO FOOD CROPS
The high cost of living, especially of the food component, as constantly highlighted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the experience of breadwinners while buying basic food items, have made many farmers to pay more attention to staple crop production instead of cash crops.
Farmers in farming communities have been pushed to abandon or severely limit the production of commercial commodities and embraced the production of staple crops. They want to feed their families first before feeding foreign and domestic factories with sesame seeds, hibiscus flower, soya beans, ginger.and wheat.
Facing soaring cost of basic food stuff triggered by floating the Naira, high cost of transportation in a country without functioning railways, millions of farmers have realised that shifting production from commercial to subsistence food crops has become a child of necessity.
This shift can affect the inflow of foreign exchange earning for the country through the exportation of agricultural commodities. It will reduce the inflow though not so drastically given that Cocoa and a few other commodities were not affected by the shift.
Details in the NBS 2023 foreign trade data shows that Nigeria exported agricultural goods worth N1.23 trillion that year. This, it says, represented a notable rise.
The data further indicates that Sesamum (riɗi) seed worth nearly N254 billion was exported last year. This was beside its domestic processing by oil millers and animal feed factories. But the NBS data did not indicate the Naira value or tonnage crushed by the domestic processors of the commodity.
Nigeria is one of the large-scale producers and exporters of ginger in the world. It is grown mainly in Kaduna, Nasarawa, Benue, Niger, Bauchi and Gombe States.
The Ginger Association of Nigeria said at its website that Nigeria’s ginger export reached a record high in 2023. The Association did not state the tonnage exported and its value in Naira. But in a separate entry, it said that a ton of wet ginger is sold for ₦4,500,000 while a ton of dry and split ginger is sold for N5,000, 000. Surprisingly the NBS did not include ginger in its 2023 foreign trade report.
The export of soya beans in 2023 earned the equivalent of N120.10 billion in foreign exchange for Nigeria. As in the case of sesame seeds, a large quantity of the commodity is processed domestically to extract oil and the residues turned into animal feed. It has also created a fried soya cake (awara) industry across the country.
Clearly the shift signifies a major resetting of priorities and flexibility by farmers in the face of the high prices of food items. On its part, the federal government suspended import taxes on certain food items hoping that will lower food prices.
The federal government also promised to collaborate with state governments to accelerate domestic food production, Yakubu Gowon-era style after the 1973 drought. Then subsidised inputs were provided to farmers.
Reports in the media suggest that the promise by the federal government to supply 20 trucks each of 25 kilogramme processed rice to the 36 states and federal capital territory is still on even though delivery to 21 states was pending at the time of writing this article.
Procuring the 222,000 metric tons of processed rice and the 740 trucks to deliver it to the 36 states and the federal capital territory is not so easy a task. Although the ₦40,000 price per bag to the designated beneficiaries in the civil service could be beyond their purchasing power, they were nevertheless baffled by the suspension of the offer while registering to benefit from it.
Watchers of the agriculture sector believe that given the combination of adequate rainfall, the resilience of our farmers and their prioritisation of food crops production, Nigerians will have food security in the coming months.
Salisu Na’inna Dambatta,
