Nigeria’s Food Supply Improved, But Its Farmers Are Bleeding
Nigeria’s Agriculture Recovery in 2025: Progress With Deep Fault Lines
A Year That Looked Better on the Shelf
AFTER the acute food shortages and record inflation spikes that defined 2024, Nigeria’s agriculture sector entered 2025 on the back foot but exited it with measurable improvements. Markets from Lagos to Katsina saw fuller stalls, better crop availability, and price moderation across staples that had previously been priced beyond the reach of ordinary households. Rice, maize, cassava, sorghum, millet, yam, cowpea and wheat all recorded stronger outputs, driven by expanded cultivation during the wet season and renewed urgency among farmers reacting to 2024’s severe under-supply. For consumers, the recovery felt real: tomato prices stabilised, cassava products softened, and many tubers sold at nearly 50% of their 2024 retail value.
Yet on the farm side of the value chain, the story is far less celebratory. While increased supply cooled consumer prices, it also cooled farmgate earnings, revealing a structural imbalance that once again left rural producers subsidising affordability without sharing in prosperity. The very success that steadied markets created financial strain for those who supplied them.
Government Intervention: Bigger Budgets, Mixed Delivery
Public involvement in agriculture expanded in 2025, supported by a sharp rise in federal budgetary allocation to over ₦800 billion, signalling stronger political prioritisation of food security, mechanisation, and farmer support. The flagship National Agricultural Growth and Agro-Pocket Project (NAGS-AP) dry-season wheat programme targeted tens of thousands of farmers, with an estimated output value of ₦160 billion. Stakeholders acknowledged that where inputs such as fertilisers and improved seeds reached farmers early, results followed. The programme, respondents said, proved that Nigeria can deliver production gains when support is timely, coordinated, and tangible.
Beyond input subsidies, efforts to modernise sector data also intensified. The Farm Family Census, Tractor Census and a drive toward a unified digital farmer registry were described as critical steps toward transparency, better credit targeting, insurance planning, and improved extension services.
But interviews show delivery remains uneven. Smallholder farmers—who account for the bulk of Nigeria’s domestic food production—reported that support from associations and government programmes is still inconsistent, unpredictable and insufficient to absorb economic shocks.
The Fragility Problem: Security and Input Costs
Two issues tower above all others as existential threats to sustainability: insecurity and input inflation. Multiple stakeholders warned that while 2025 brought modest recovery, the gains remain fragile because farming communities remain vulnerable. Kidnapping, armed clashes, and restricted access to farmlands and forests in parts of the North-Central and South-South continued to shrink safe production zones. At the same time, the cost of seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, veterinary services, and machinery maintenance remained prohibitively high.
Prince Oyedele Oyetunde, Editor-in-Chief of Farmers Choice Magazine, described 2025’s production performance as encouraging but warned that the momentum will reverse without long-term structural protection. “Nigeria improved supply,” he noted, “but we are still ignoring producer survival.”
The National Cotton Association (NACOTAN) also underscored agriculture’s continued dominance, estimating sector GDP contribution at 30% in Q3 2025. Eliakim Integrated Services Ltd’s COO, Austine Olatujoye, said growth rose from 0.07% in Q1 to 3.79% in Q3, with the sector accounting for 26.8% of total GDP.
But for Yinka Adesola of the shea and commodity value chain community, 2025 was financially catastrophic. She blamed import-driven tariff waivers for crashing prices, erasing rural investments and threatening future planting cycles. “A harvest year can still bankrupt farmers,” she said, “if policy protects importers more than producers.”
HMO-Style Pricing for Farmers: Upgrade or Collapse
Like Nigeria’s strained health-insurance ecosystem, agriculture in 2025 created a two-tier reality. Farmers who wanted moderate stability had to “upgrade” into expensive input packages, increasing production costs by 30–40%, yet reimbursement for those investments remained low. Many producers could not recover costs for even the most common illnesses of agriculture—input inflation.
Northern tomato farmer and NATPAN secretary, Sani Danladi, summed it up best: “Public hunger complaints fell, but farmer satisfaction fell faster.”
Sector Scorecard: Stabilisation Without Safety Nets
The year closed with stakeholder recovery ratings ranging from 5.5 to 6 out of 10—a sign of stabilisation but not structural health. Poultry Association President, Sunday Ezeobiora, praised solar adoption, climate-smart agriculture and backward integration into local raw-material sourcing, but also warned that resilience is not a substitute for security.
Nigeria’s agriculture recovery is measurable. Its sustainability is not guaranteed.
