Structural Crisis In Agricultural Sector ’ll Have Implications For Nigeria-PeacePro
The Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro) has submitted that Nigeria’s agriculture sector is in a deep structural crisis while lamenting that farmers in the country have lost nearly ₦5 trillion (approximately $4billion) in productive capital over the past two years due to policy-induced price crashes, poor and misleading weather forecasts by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), and severe market distortions.
In a statement made available to Team@orientactualmags.com by its Executive Director, Mr Abdulrazaq Hamzat, PeacePro described the losses as direct agricultural capital destruction at the producer level, stressing that the estimate does not include secondary economic effects such as consumer inflation, GDP contraction, foreign exchange pressure, or security-related costs.
‘Those impacts come later. What has already happened is the liquidation of farmer capital’ PeacePro said.
According to the organization, Nigeria did not successfully ‘control food prices’ between 2024 and 2025 while a combination of poorly timed policy interventions, price suppression mechanisms, weak market coordination, and unreliable weather forecasting by NiMet had forced farmers to sell produce below cost and this had wiped out the capital required to sustain future production cycles.
‘This was not a market correction. It was a policy shock that transferred value away from producers’ the statement added.
While Nigeria has an estimated 38–40 million people who engage in agriculture, PeacePro clarified that the most severe damage was concentrated among market facing producers, not subsistence farmers, although subsistence farmers were also adversely affected, particularly by poor and misleading weather forecasts issued by NiMet.
‘The most affected group includes 6–8 million producers, small and medium scale commercial farmers, storage poor price taking producers, farmers engaged in grains, tubers, vegetables, and legumes.
These producers supply Nigeria’s urban and regional food markets’ the organization added.
Noting that repeated price collapses across two consecutive production cycles resulted in aggregate capital losses approaching ₦5 trillion, even under conservative assumptions, PeacePro however submitted that the scale of destruction is comparable to a financial sector collapse, with one critical difference adding that ‘this crisis did not happen in banks or stock markets, but happened quietly in farms and rural communities’.
Hamzat also cautioned that depleted farmer capital will inevitably lead to reduced planting in 2026, lower domestic food supply, higher future food prices, increased rural poverty and social instability.
PeacePro therefore urged Nigerian authorities to publicly acknowledge the scale of agricultural capital destruction and immediately shift policy away from short term price suppression toward producer protection, capital preservation, and market stability.
‘No country can bankrupt its farmers and remain food secure and Nigeria will soon pay the price for policy decisions that treated farmers as shock absorbers for inflation, if not corrected in time’ the statement added-Team@orientactualmags.com Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08035023079, 08059100286, 09094171980 or get in touch via orientactualmag@gmail.com. Thank you
