High Input Costs, Insecurity Undercut Federal Govt’s Food Emergency Interventions

Three years after President Bola Tinubu declared a state of emergency on meals safety, rising agricultural enter prices, restricted entry to authorities assist and insecurity proceed to check the effectiveness of the federal authorities’s interventions.

Farmers stated the price of producing meals has elevated regardless of efforts to spice up output.

The emergency declaration, issued on 13 July 2023, aimed to extend meals manufacturing, enhance availability, and make important commodities extra reasonably priced.

Since then, the federal government has continued to pursue a number of measures, together with the recapitalisation of the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), the National Agricultural Growth Scheme and Agro-Pocket (NAGS-AP), elevated funding for the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF), a 2,000-tractor mechanisation programme and the latest introduction of the Guaranteed Minimum Price (GMP) programme, amongst others.

However, farmers’ and market experiences elevate questions on how far the programmes have improved circumstances on the bottom.

The federal authorities claimed that the National Agricultural Growth Scheme and Agro Pocket (NAGS-AP) had produced 2.53 million metric tonnes of crops, valued at N2.31 trillion, throughout 4 farming seasons.

The minister of state for agriculture and meals safety, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, in February 2026, stated the output was recorded throughout the mission’s give attention to six staple crops: wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, soybean, and cassava, below the federal authorities’s meals safety emergency assist programme.

While the reported output factors to elevated manufacturing below the scheme, it doesn’t, by itself, set up whether or not meals manufacturing prices have declined.

A market examine by LEADERSHIP confirmed that the price of fertiliser, agrochemicals and tractor companies had elevated considerably since 2023, including to the monetary burden on farmers.

A 50kg bag of urea fertiliser, which bought for between N40,000 and N46,500 in 2025, now prices between N47,500 and N55,000. NPK 20:10:10 rose from N35,000–N40,000 to N38,000–N45,000, whereas NPK 15:15:15 elevated from N40,000–N50,000 to N55,000–N64,000.

The value of agrochemicals has additionally risen from N2,000-N4,000 per litre in 2023 to N5,000–N7,000 per litre in 2026, relying on the model. Similarly, the price of hiring a tractor to plough a plot of land within the Federal Capital Territory and Nasarawa State has doubled from about N5,000 in 2023 to N10,000.

The rising prices imply farmers should make investments extra in cultivation earlier than harvest, growing their publicity to losses when yields are poor, or market costs fail to cowl manufacturing bills, thereby driving up meals costs.

The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, not too long ago claimed that important meals costs had dropped by as much as 50 per cent in comparison with pre-2023 ranges.

However, Nigerians from throughout the nation, particularly merchants and sellers of meals gadgets, disputed the declare in a LEADERSHIP report.

For farmers within the FCT, the influence of presidency interventions stays uneven. Peter Abraham, a maize farmer in Orozo, stated he had but to learn from any authorities agricultural assist programme.

“I think the government intervention is only reaching a privileged few; I am yet to benefit from any intervention, if any exist,” Abraham stated.

Another farmer, Joseph Audu, who farms beans, stated the price of cultivation had elevated significantly for the reason that emergency declaration, regardless of the federal government’s efforts to assist agriculture.

“I can say things were better in 2023 than now. I spent less to plant that time than now; the cost of fertiliser and chemicals (agro) has increased, and even the money we pay labourers has gone up as well,” he stated.

Insecurity has additional difficult the state of affairs, with farmers in affected communities corresponding to North-West, Central and East going through restricted entry to farmland, displacement and disruptions to planting and harvesting.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, in its September 2026 evaluation, highlighted insecurity and excessive agricultural enter prices among the many elements affecting meals manufacturing and entry in Nigeria.

It estimated that almost 36.3 million Nigerians confronted extreme acute meals insecurity in the course of the Jun -to-August 2026 lean season.

According to the UN company in its September 2026 nation temporary, annual meals inflation additionally rose to twenty.3 per cent in July, up from 8.9 per cent in January.

A farmers’ affiliation stated gaps persist between the federal government’s manufacturing aims and weak households’ means to entry adequate meals.

The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) stated agricultural progress figures must be assessed in opposition to their precise influence on farmers’ productiveness and earnings.

AFAN deputy nationwide president, Daniel Okafor, stated agricultural inputs corresponding to fertiliser, seeds, labour, transportation and equipment remained costly.

Okafor additionally pressured that insecurity continued to restrict agricultural manufacturing, as farmers in some areas couldn’t safely entry their farms whereas others had been displaced from their communities.

Okafor known as for stronger collaboration between authorities and farmers’ organisations, arguing that agricultural insurance policies would ship higher outcomes if farmers had been concerned of their formulation and implementation.

He stated, “Government assist ought to translate into sensible interventions that attain the farmer on the grassroots, significantly within the areas of reasonably priced agricultural financing, high quality inputs, mechanisation, irrigation, extension companies, storage, processing, rural infrastructure, safety and market entry.

“There can also be a necessity for stronger collaboration with farmers’ organisations corresponding to AFAN within the formulation and implementation of agricultural insurance policies and programmes. The farmer should stay on the centre of agricultural growth.

”If farmers can’t work their land safely, it is going to be tough to maintain agricultural progress and obtain meals safety. Therefore, bettering safety in farming communities should stay a precedence.”