Stakeholders advocate market access solutions to reduce Nigeria’s agricultural waste

By Cynthia Alo

At the backdrop of severe infrastructure gaps, some stakeholders in the agric value chain, including the Chief Executive Officer of Rashak Farms and Agro-Allied Limited, Rahmah Aderinoye and Executive Director of Community Action for Food Security, Azeez Salawu, have called for a paradigm shift from traditional storage interventions toward solving market access barriers to curb agricultural waste.

This is even as they urged financial institutions and governments at the sub-national to prioritise structured off-taker agreements and consistent policies over continuous farmer training programmes.

Speaking on Sunrise Daily on Channels TV on Saturday, the stakeholders analysed the systemic blockages driving the nation’s N3.7 trillion agricultural wastage.

Chief Executive Officer of Rashak Farms and Agro-Allied Limited, Rahmah Aderinoye, stated that Nigeria’s food security crisis cannot be solved by asking smallholders to store perishables when there are no clear channels to off-take the products.

Aderinoye said: “Nigeria has a market access problem that is disguised as a post-harvest losses problem. If we tackle the issue of market access, this post-harvest loss of a thing that we’re discussing will be something of the past.

“Can you imagine if as you are giving a farmer input at the beginning of the season, you’re also handing over to the farmer an off-taker agreement, saying whatever it is that you cultivate, I’ll take it off. And they have an idea of what the price is, they have an idea of the specification that you need, they have an idea of the quantity that you need.

“We want good government policy, consistent government policy. For example, I was just with some of our farmers in Kano yesterday, and the word majority of them use for what happened to them in the last planting season was calamity, and that’s as a result of a single government policy.

“We don’t want to show up in a government company, come up with a policy, four years time, and that government company change the policy, and then, you know, it affects this. The political will also has to be there.

“There are ways you can properly preserve your produce without necessarily going heavy on the chemicals. However, again, it’s not like I am trying to always bring this back to our policies and whatnot, but these things don’t happen in isolation.

“I think we need less of talking and more of doing, in all honesty. I think we know what we are supposed to do. I think we have the answers to some of these problems. It’s about time we start doing and less of talking, please.”

On his part, Founder and Executive Director of Community Action for Food Security, Azeez Salawu, noted that tracking losses at the sub-national level is crucial, as state governments must move past political rewards and deliberately integrate data collection into their agricultural ministries.

Salawu said: “The issue or the challenges around food security in Nigeria has really gone beyond production. How do we make sure that the little we are producing gets to scale through the markets?

“Gone are those days where we would continue to reward political support with some of these things. We need to take some ministries very seriously because everything starts from the leader. If a leader is not intentional about what is really going to happen, what is going to drive a lot of things, especially when it comes to food, we will still continue dragging the same thing.

“If a commissioner is really intentional about all of these things, they understand the challenges and how it affects them directly or indirectly, a commissioner would make sure that he pushes for budget increments, apart from allocation, making sure that those budgets come out.

“What they need is sensitisation. In the sense that a farmer needs to understand that, yes, you are producing. Can we identify people that are into storage? Can we identify people that are aggregating? Can we identify people that are adding value? And it helps to solve the farmer’s problem.

“Whether you are a banker, journalist, or anything, we must eat. And that is why we all need to be part of this conversation. We must make sure that we are holding government accountable, especially at the subnational level.

“At the moment, we are currently building a block chain technology that can be incorporated to solar dryers for farmers. Apart from getting it dried, there will be some sort of traceability, ownership, and we are able to understand where a particular product is coming from. It also gives rooms for enough confidence for people to want to do a lot of things once it is transparent and efficient.”

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