By Boluwatife Adedokun
A Development Communications Strategist, Feyikemi Adurogbangba, has called on the Federal Government and relevant stakeholders to build on previous agricultural programmes rather than implementing projects in isolation.
Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday, Adurogbangba reacted to farmers’ complaints about losses in food produce due to price crashes. She described the recurring challenges faced by farmers as a persistent cycle, despite interventions from government and development partners.
“The crisis confronting farmers is persistent and will continue until risk is no longer borne by those least able to absorb it,” she said.
Adurogbangba stressed that many farmers still experience harvest-time price crashes, limited access to affordable storage, and insufficient bargaining power to negotiate favourable prices. She identified key challenges as rising input and transportation costs, volatile markets, harvest-time losses, and the reliance on price gains in one crop to offset losses in others.
She also pointed to structural weaknesses in the agricultural system, noting that risk remains heavily concentrated at the farm level.
Highlighting macroeconomic pressures, Adurogbangba said:
“In the past three to four years, farmers have faced sharp increases in input costs following subsidy removal, climate variability and flooding, and foreign exchange volatility affecting fertiliser, packaging, and logistics. These system-wide shocks have moved faster than programme gains could scale, thereby eroding many of the improvements achieved.”
While acknowledging the importance of productivity reforms, she added that improving productivity, storage, and market information alone is not enough without coordinated stakeholder action.
She urged coordinated measures at both state and federal levels, advocating for a shift from pilot projects to market-level stabilisation efforts and deliberate strategies to reduce farmers’ exposure to seasonal price crashes.
