FG Seeks Reduction in Production Cost to Address Food Inflation, Accessibility

•NALDA develops 10-year blueprint to revolutionise agriculture, boost food security

James Emejo in Abuja 

The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, yesterday said farmers must work to optimise production resource to reduce food inflation in the country.

The minister lamented that currently cost of production accounted for about 60 per cent of total expenses from land preparation to harvest, noting that this has significant impact of food affordability in the country.

He spoke at a strategy co-creation workshop for stakeholders with the theme, “Alliances for Sustainable Agricultural Land Development and Food Security”, which was organised by the National Agricultural Lands Development Authority (NALDA) in collaboration with AG Partnerships in Abuja.

Abdullahi said the production system should be optimised, adding that “We must reduce production cost” to make food cheaper.

The minister further noted that while cost of production remained “very high”, farmers would at the end of the day move to recover the amount spent during the cultivation process as well take some profit.

He said such costs would ultimately be transferred to consumers in the form of higher food prices.

He urged all stakeholder at the workshop to recommend ways to achieve address the high cost of production to achieve President Bola Tinubu’s agenda on food security.

The minister commended the Executive Secretary/Chief Executive of NALDA, Mr. Cornelius Adebayo for the workshop and pledged government’s support to help the authority actualise its mandate on food security.

The NALDA boss said the authority had developed a 10-year strategic plan (2025 to 2035) that will guide land development going forward.

He said the authority had also identified the need for strategic partnership to track challenges and provide good and sustainable solutions to address them.

He said, “Land development is not only land clearing, you have land clearing, land preparation, irrigation, including infrastructure on the farms and so on.

“You notice that some clusters that we are proposing would have hostels for farmers, security facilities and that’s why yesterday you saw that we signed an MoU with the Police Trust Fund to provide security installation within our clusters. 

“So, generally, it’s a framework that will guide us in delivering sustainable land development in the next 10 years.”

Speaking on the plan, Adebayo said, going by the presidential mandate, “we need to open up 10 million hectares. And it costs a lot of money, you cannot do it alone, government cannot do it alone. So, this framework helps to get private sector involvement.

“Even if we are able to achieve that five million hectares in the next five years, or even before then, can we optimise the use of land? Because recovery and harvest per hectare is too low.

“So, you realise that even the 10 million target that we set for ourselves might be too much because if we optimise even five million, we might be able to produce way more than we expected.

“t’s a holistic thing. We’re looking at, at least in the next medium term, for five years, let’s be able to achieve that five million hectares. And that would goa long way for food security for Nigeria, and also for export of food out of the country.”

He told THISDAY that event was a clear message to everyone that NALDA remained open for business, adding “NALDA is open for partnership, NALDA is open for sustainable food development in Nigeria.”

Also, speaking at the workshop, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda said the ministry in collaboration NALDA, has commenced land clearing to support internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the country.

The initiative is also part of NALDA’s newly unveiled 10-year strategic plan aimed at developing 10 million hectares of land to boost food production.

He said the ministry has partnered NALDA to develop 150,000 hectares of farmland to aid IDPs. 

He pointed out that Nigeria currently has over three million displaced persons, many of whom live in IDP camps or host communities, stressing  that it’s not sustainable for the federal government and humanitarian organisation to keep spending billions of naira every year to support the IDPs, hence the need to explore durable solution