The Nationwide Bureau of Statistics (NBS) information evaluation has revealed that agriculture sector progress slowed to 1.76 p.c in 2024, hitting a five-year low in blow for Nigeria’s meals safety drive.

NBS confirmed that Nigeria’s agriculture progress recorded a distorted progress sample within the five-year interval from 2020 to 2024, with final 12 months reporting the bottom.

Agric sector progress stood at 3.42 p.c in 2020, rising to three.58 p.c in 2021.

Progress within the sector dipped in 2022 to 2.05 p.c however grew to 2.10 p.c in 2023. In 2024, agric progress slumped to 1.74 p.c.

Specialists within the sector attributed the expansion decline to the worsening influence of local weather change, excessive enter prices and insufficient funding for farmers.

Abiodun Olorundero, managing companion of Prasinos Farms, informed BusinessDay that local weather change was a giant shock that affected farmers’ productiveness in 2024, hurting agric progress.

“Final 12 months, quite a lot of farmers suffered from local weather change. There have been drought and extreme rainfall that worn out a number of hectares of farmlands. This affected the sector adversely,” he stated.

Olorundenro famous that the gradual agric progress implies that authorities interventions in 2024 weren’t efficient sufficient to yield the required outcomes of boosting meals productiveness.

Jude Obi, president of the Affiliation of Natural Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria, stated the suspension of the Anchor Debtors Programme (ABP) – an initiative that offered low cost credit for farmers within the type of inputs – negatively impacted progress within the sector final 12 months.

“Enter costs surged by over 200 p.c and farmers couldn’t get enough funding to develop extra and the ABP that offered such low cost funding was suspended,” he stated.

“Low-cost finance is crucial in boosting meals manufacturing and attaining safety, however farmers didn’t have entry to funding in 2024,” he famous.

The ABP, which offered funding subsidy for farmers, was suspended indefinitely in late 2023 on allegations of fraud and mismanagement.

“I feel the apparent motive for this low progress we’ve seen within the final 5 years is insecurity,” Muda Yusuf, director and chief govt officer of the Centre for the Promotion of Non-public Enterprise, stated in a phone interview Monday.

“Insecurity has been a serious problem for folks within the agricultural sector, particularly these within the northern a part of the nation. Another excuse is funding. After the top of the Anchor Debtors Programme, funding for the agric sector slowed, if not utterly disappeared,” he defined.

What began as unknown gunmen charade has advanced into a serious problem, altering the nation’s dream of attaining meals safety. Though farmers are starting to heave a sigh of aid, the aftermath of insecurity is taking its toll on meals manufacturing and agric contribution to the nation.

A median of 1,356 farmers misplaced their lives to insecurity between 2020 and 2024, based on the analysis agency, SBM Intelligence.

Whereas agric progress in This autumn 2024 is the bottom in 5 years, its contribution to combination GDP in actual phrases additionally took the identical trajectory.

Agric contribution to the financial system fell to 25.59 p.c within the fourth quarter (This autumn) of 2024 from 26.95, 26.84, 26.46 and 26.11 p.c in the identical interval of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively.

A January report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) famous that about 33.1 million Nigerians might endure from meals insecurity as a result of persistent financial hardship and violence in food-producing areas.

Specialists warn that Nigeria’s quest for attaining meals safety is likely to be a facade if points round local weather change, insecurity, and funding should not utterly tackled.

Supply: BusinessDay