Ministry For Agriculture AND CBN Seeks Enhanced Food Production

The ministry for agriculture and the central bank of Nigeria have come together to seek for ways to reposition the agricultural sector and the attainment of food security. This effort has the support of industry analysts who seek enhanced agricultural productivity.

The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Governor, Sanusi Lamido stated that existing agricultural policies should be reviewed with the aim improving output from the sector. Economic commentators said revelation from the apex bank’s governor is that Nigeria is incurring a total food import bill of $4.2 billion (about N638.4 billion) annually due to the neglect of agriculture.

A completely new agricultural policy was proposed by the CBN, to which observers have said the new blueprint may form the basis of intellectual discourse in the days to come.

The Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina also identified one of the problems in the sector as the appalling level of financing in agriculture in comparison with other African nations. He added that, “Nigeria spends only 3 percent or less of her entire budget on agriculture. Smaller African countries spend more. Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique spend between 10 percent to 15 percent and more on agriculture.” Another problem besetting the agricultural sector is the problem of poor and rudimentary storage culture

In nigeria, he mentioned that the fertiliser usage today is only 13kg per hectare of fertiliser. “Now the global average is 100kg, China is close to 400kg per hectare. Most of the food we produce comes from expanding cultivated areas, not from increasing productivity per unit area,” he said.

He also disclosed that a problem that Nigerians need to sort out on terms of development in the agricultural sector is the insatiable appetite for food items not produced in the country.

It was pointed out that when on the issue of agricultural access to financing, the minister noted that Nigerian farmers have had a tough time with banks, noting that only 1 percent of total lending in banking sector goes to agriculture, a sector that accounts for 70 percent of employment opportunities and 44 percent of the nation’s GDP. 

Sanusi, in reaction to this stated that the reason for their lack of interest in funding agricultural projects is that the banking sector cannot invest in the sector because commodities values are yet to be fixed in the country, stressing that “it is difficult to fix the financial value chain until the nation can fix the commodity value chain.”

At a recent economic forum in ekiti state, , Dr. Pat Utomi of the Lagos Business School said all hands must be on deck to fully tap the potential in the agricultural sector since previous interventions of past administrations failed to improve the performance of the sector.

The CBN governor said the major challenges facing the sector include underfunded research and development; lack of infrastructure; inadequate funding; lack of local storage and processing systems; threats from pests, diseases and climate change challenges, amongst others.

Measures taken to provide a way forward to the progress of the agricultural sector by the central bank of Nigeria which is provided in a document prepared by the CBN tagged, Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending, includes far reaching decisions like the repeal of the Nigeria Agricultural Insurance Corporation and a review of the Land Use Act, among others.

Also, an amount of N450 billion would be made available to farmers and also to the entire agriculture value chain in Nigeria.