Nigerian Farmers Lose ₦5T to Policy Crashes, Bad Weather Forecasts in Two Years

News in Brief

-PeacePro reports Nigerian farmers lost nearly ₦5 trillion in capital over 2024-2025 due to policy price crashes, faulty NiMet forecasts, and market distortions.

-The organisation warns of 2026 food shortages, higher prices, and rural unrest unless policies shift to protect farmers, calling the damage comparable to a financial collapse in rural communities.

Nigerian farmers have lost nearly ₦5 trillion (approximately $4 billion) in productive capital over the past two years, worsening the fate of many farmers who struggle to make a living in the challenging Nigerian economy.

In a statement issued by the Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro), they raised an alarm over a massive wipeout of capital in Nigeria's agriculture sector.

The group's Executive Director, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, described the situation as direct agricultural capital destruction at the producer level. He pinned the blame on a toxic mix of policy-induced price crashes, poor and misleading weather forecasts from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), and severe market distortions that forced farmers to sell their produce below cost.

Hamzat stressed that this ₦5 trillion figure does not even account for knock-on effects like consumer inflation, economic contraction, foreign exchange pressures, or security-related costs.

“Those impacts come later. What has already happened is the liquidation of farmer capital,” PeacePro said.

Policy Shocks, Not Market Forces

PeacePro argued that Nigeria failed to 'control food prices' between 2024 and 2025, despite government efforts. Instead, poorly timed policy interventions, price suppression mechanisms, weak market coordination, and unreliable NiMet forecasts wiped out the capital farmers needed for future planting seasons.

“This was not a market correction. It was a policy shock that transferred value away from producers,” the statement added.

The group highlighted past NiMet failures, such as the 2025 Seasonal Climate Prediction that misled farmers in Kwara's Asa communities. Predicted rains from May to November turned into a three-month drought from June to August, devastating crops and livelihoods. Hamzat had earlier called this a huge failure with national implications for food security.

With 38-40 million Nigerians engaged in agriculture, PeacePro clarified that the hardest hit were not subsistence farmers but the 6–8 million market-facing producers, which are small and medium-scale commercial farmers dealing in grains, tubers, vegetables, and legumes. These are the very producers who supply urban and regional food markets across the country, keeping plates full in cities like Lagos, Abuja, and Kano.

Hamzat explained that repeated price collapses over two production cycles led to these aggregate losses, even under conservative estimates. He likened the scale to a financial sector meltdown, but with a stark difference.

“This crisis did not happen in banks or stock markets. It happened quietly, in farms and rural communities,” he stated.

Looming Food Shortages and Rural Unrest

The depleted capital spells trouble ahead. PeacePro cautioned that reduced planting in 2026 will mean lower domestic food supply, skyrocketing prices, deeper rural poverty, and heightened social instability. “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 on time,” Hamzat warned.

Young entrepreneurs and students eyeing agric ventures might find doors slamming shut, while professionals in the sector grapple with a shrinking capital base. Stakeholders, from millers to transporters, feel the ripples as rural economies grind to a halt. PeacePro urged authorities to publicly acknowledge the destruction and pivot from short-term price controls to protecting producers, preserving capital, and stabilising markets.

This crisis hits at a time when Nigeria's food inflation raged above 30%, pushing millions into hunger. Government imports and promises of price crashes in 2025 have now materialised, but it leaves farmers bearing the brunt. For the average Nigerian youth dreaming of agribusiness startups, this is a wake-up call: without farmer capital, no supply chain thrives.