This thread was inspired by the bashing I received because of a comment I made opining that the problem with rice farming and indeed agricultural as a whole in Nigeria is NOT importation. The problem is much more fundamental.

Let me quickly add that I grew up in a village where rice farming was and still remains the major occupation of the people. Nigeria has not achieved self sufficiency in food production, hence banning importation will only lead to scarcity and soaring prices, as we are currently experiencing.

Some might think that the high price is only temporary, but that is incorrect. The price isn't going to come down anytime soon, as long as the challenges remain.

What then is the problem? Well they are numerous, but I will summarize it in one sentence; Farming in Nigeria is expensive and difficult. While agriculture may be the largest employer of labour, it is mainly at a subsistent level, hardly enough to feed a nation.

Nigeria consumes about 5.5 million metric tons of rice annually, but we only produce about 3.6 million metric tons. Even that which we produce, is rather expensive, and a lot of the local produce does not meet the quality of the imported rice. The biggest reason for this is

LACK OF TECHNOLOGY!
Lack of recent methods, ideas, and equipment in farming affects agricultural output in all stages of the farming business. The absence of mechanization limits the progress of farming activities and this stagnates development. In the amount of time it takes 100 workers to cultivate, harvest and process 100 bags of rice, a fully mechanised farmer would have processed 2000 bags, with far less effort. The mechanised farmer can afford to sell with a small profit margin and focus on turn over, while the manual farmer will be out of business if he tries to compete with that price!

Again there is the problem of milling. How many rice mills are in Nigeria? What is their capacity? Will they meet local consumption?
Some of the few mills we have are far from the real farmers, hence these farmers resort to local milling, and the output is substandard, hence the apathy towards local rice. The quantity of well milled local rice is below 2 million tons, that is about 30% of local demand.

We haven't addressed the problem of transportation and storage. Getting agricultural produce from your farm to the market is a herculean task. You wouldn't understand if you are not in the business. Most farmers are forced to sell locally. Again, if you are producing perishable food like tomatoes, much of your produce will definitely go to waste because you cannot preserve it beyond a few days. The retailers who buy from you will also suffer losses if they don't sell all their produce on that market day.

Again, farmers are unaware of new varieties of rice seedlings. Fertilizers are very expensive and unaffordable to the local farmers. Rice production is plagued by myriad of problems including; attack from pests like birds, rodents and diseases. Yield per farm is low and financial return is correspondingly low, the prospect of rice production is low as many farmers are shifting to cassava farming.

I could go on and on about the problems facing agriculture in Nigeria, but I do not want to bore you any longer. If you think we can simply solve the problem by having more farmers, well you are wrong. The cost of production is still very high, and output is low because of the problems, hence we will still be battling high prices and scarcity.

Despite having about 2 million farmers, American farms contribute about 136 billion dollars to their nation’s GDP. If 70% of Nigerians are farmers, we have the numbers to contribute more to the Nigerian economy. However, this can only be achieved when the problems of agriculture are tackled. Not necessarily by banning imports.

If you consider banning imports to be a solution, then let us also ban the importation of fuel, and let's see if it will help solve our fuel crisis. You would agree that the solution is to get our refineries working, and ramp up local production, hence eliminating the need for importation? That is exactly what we need in the agricultural sector. Tackle the internal challenges, ramp up production. If we can produce 5.5 million tons of high quality rice, there would be no need to import. The smugglers will find something else to do!

the govt is clueless...

Unfortunately the Nigerian education system has rendered people docile. ....


Watch the inflation about to come.... I forsee serious riots Within 6 months!