The high prices of farming input are negatively affecting the capacity of small farmers to prepare adequately for the cropping season.
The Programme Coorodinator, Farmers Development Union (FADU), Mr Victor Olowe, told The Nation that input financing has become a problem yearly, as the government’s efforts have failed to address the issue even with the promise of subsiding farmers costs by 50 per cent.
High transportation costs and market access are two key issues faced by vegetable and root crop farmers. While many farmers were productive and harvested their produce in commercial quantities, the unavailability of markets was a big drawback.
Another challenge was the high cost of transportation of having to spend at least two to three days in urban areas waiting for their produce to be sold and in the process, some of the ripe tomatos get spoilt.
He said the food system is highly fuel and transport dependent. This makes the production system less secure and food less affordable.
Meanwhile, many poor farmers who cannot afford machinery, fuels and commercial farm inputs find themselves at a disadvantage in the food economy.
As a result, thousands of farmers suffer great losses.
Olowe said farmers have to slash labour costs dramatically to have any chance of saving operations.
He said labour costs was affecting farming operations nationwide.
Early this year, fish farmers decried the continuous increase in cost of fish feeds in the market while the market price of fish falls yearly, leading to exit of many fish farms.
According to them, the dependence on imported feeds has stimulated wide price fluctuation, leading to price inflation of feedstuff.
At present, a bag of Coppen feeds, an imported feed, costs between N4,000 and N5,200 per bag as compared to the price of a live fish, sold for about N480.
The government only regulates the commodity markets through import controls and price support through subsidies or direct government purchases and other policy instruments designed to support the feed manufacturing industry.
Under the Industrial Development (Income Tax Relief) Act, the manufacture of animal feeds was placed on the list of pioneer industries; this ensures a five-year tax holiday to new feed millers entering the industry and aimed at stimulating investment in the animal feed mill industry.
Prices are fairly consistent with product quality and for some items pegged to those specifications that are most likely to vary, for instance the moisture levels for grains or crude protein levels for fish meals.
The larger feed mills maintain laboratories that check raw material quality and monitor the feed manufacturing process, to help maintain the quality of feedstuff.
Importation of feeds, according to fish farmers, is the major cause of the increasing price of fish feeds in the market, whereas importers of feeds attribute the price increase to the corrupt nature of law enforcement agents.
President, Lagos State Catfish Association of Nigeria, Rotimi Omodehin, said the high cost of feeds have hindered many farming business and closed many farming enterprises.
He urged the government to invest in animal feeds to help improve the productivity level of farmers.
“Building of feeds mill will help the farmers, and farmers are willing to patronise government feeds because individual retailer’s price is killing the farmers,” he said.
He reiterated that subsidy in agriculture is very important and removal by the government is to the detriment of the average farmer.
A livestock farmer, Temitope Odetola, said the government had neglected livestock farming and little or no funds were made available for the farmers.
He added that the small-scale farmers find it hard to get capital and bank loan is out-of-reach for them.
