Agric Experts Foresee Increased Hunger In 2022

Stakeholders in the agricul­tural sector have rated the industry badly in the outgo­ing year 2021, expressing concern for the future of the country in the coming year 2022.

The stakeholders said that the expectation of farmers for 2021 was not met and that unless something serious was done, Nigerians should expect in­creased hunger in the coming year as things are only getting worse in the sector.

They lamented the hike in pric­es of feed in the poultry and the aquaculture sub-sectors, which they said have forced a lot of farm­ers to close shop, while crop farm­ers are being troubled by cattle and herders.

Idowu Asenuga, Chair­man, Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), Ogun State chapter, said that the sector fared badly in 2021 in the sense that prices of raw ma­terials reached rooftop, say­ing it was unprecedented.

“The poultry sector wit­nessed unprecedented hike in grain prices, soya going up to N400,000 and maize up to N250,000 per ton which is unprecedented and of course the prices of feed from N2,800 in 2019 to over N6,000 in 2020 for layer feed and for broiler it went up­ward to over N8,000 per bag”, he said.

He said that year 2022 may be worse, noting that this is maize and soya season and the prices of soya is about N400,000 per bag and maize has gone up to N230,000 per ton.

“For 2022, I don’t know what is going to happen. All I know is that Nigerians should be ready for hunger. That is the reality. Things are only getting worse and from the look of things it can only get worse.

“Our birds are dying, avi­an influenza is affecting our birds and the government is not allowing us to bring in vaccines for the birds and the government is not compensating us either. Ni­gerians should be ready to go hungry,” he added.

Prince Wale Oyekoya, an agriculturalist, said that the sector that is supposed to be one of the most important sectors has not fared well at all, noting that instead it is riddled with corruption, in­eptitude, lack of seriousness and neglect.

He said no farmer’s ex­pectations were met for many reasons and that in­security played a major role in discouraging farmers where they were displaced, kidnapped and their crops eaten by cattle.

“Lack of sustainable poli­cy kills the sector and causes food crisis. Eighty percent of the foods we consume in Nigeria are imported with billions of dollars, foreign exchange that is supposed to be used to import equipment for the agro-processing and manufacturing sectors.

“Selfish interest of some of our so-called leaders is affecting the sector. Most of the agricultural interven­tion funds are going into the wrong hands. The state governors are not helping matters over agric funding.

“I see no reason why state governors cannot de­velop agriculture in their states and by so doing feed their people and export some of the farm produce but instead, they fly down to Abuja to beg for monthly allocations.”

Oyekoya further stated that visiting food markets will show the rot in the agric sector where food stuffs are very expensive and out of reach of the common man. He said the state governors would rather give agric lead­ership roles to visionless, clueless and inexperienced people, adding that land allocations in the hands of the state governors are being misused.

“Every state is blessed one way or the other with a comparative advantageous role to develop the agric sec­tor in their states but they are not taking advantage of that.