Nigeria’s food import grow at 11% every year

Nigeria’s importation of foodstuffs it can produce is growing at the high rate of eleven percent per anum, a situation which is negatively affecting the value of the Naira, the Chairman of All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Senator Abdullahi Adamu has said. Senator Adamu, who said this during the Farmers’ Chronicle’s first Agriculture/Agro-Allied Industry Conference, said […]

Nigeria’s importation of foodstuffs it can produce is growing at the high rate of eleven percent per anum, a situation which is negatively affecting the value of the Naira, the Chairman of All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Senator Abdullahi Adamu has said.
 Senator Adamu, who said this during the Farmers’ Chronicle’s first Agriculture/Agro-Allied Industry Conference, said “import dependency is hurting Nigerian farmers as well, displacing local production and creating rising unemployment.”
 He said though the sector is receiving government attention, serious investment is needed across board to enhance production and increase the sector’s contribution to the GDP.

President Center for Research and Universal Education, Professor Elijah Bayeri, said there are agric business areas that Nigerians are not fully exploiting.
He said: “In fact, milk production has been nose driving or at best has remained constant since 1994. This scenario is compounded more so when the volume of egg supply is low, being 10.56g per person per day as compared with the usual recommendation that an egg should be consumed by an adult per day. This recommendation would imply a crate of 30eggs per month. This story also holds for other meat products including chicken.
“This livestock sub-sector is an important company of the Nigerian Agricultural Economy. Its importance derives from the fact that it is one of the key contributors to the national economy. For example, using the 1984 factor based data, the sub-sector contributed on an annual basis, a little over 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 1996 and the year 2000.”
 He added that, “Nigeria can now tap into the $31bn US booming garment market. When African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) came into effect, many Nigerians saw a window of foreign exchange earning in textile and garment section of the act and keyed into it. Such Nigerians now earn millions of dollars from garment and textile exports to the US annually.
Nigeria’s textile and apparels have been granted duty-free passage into the United States where a large market exists for ethnic African  fabrics and designs.”
Board Chairman of farmers’ Chronicle, Alhaji Ahmed Rabiu, said Nigeria “should highlight the significance of the role of agriculture in our economy and seek to preserve domestic policy flexibility to guard food security concerns and be ready to favour a market oriented and non trade distortive approach while favouring gradual and phased reduction in export subsidies.