Stakeholders in the agricultural sector have expressed different views over the Federal Government’s plan to reintroduce the Commodity Board, to regulate soaring prices of food in the country.

Recall that last month; the Vice President Kashim Shettima, at a two-day high-level strategic meeting on climate change, food systems and resource mobilisation in Abuja, announced that the board would be given the mandate to assess and regulate food prices, as well as maintain a strategic food reserve for stabilising prices of crucial grains and other food items.

“Our solution to the potential food crisis has become immediate, medium, and long-term strategies…and addressing price volatility by establishing a national commodity board. This board will continually assess and regulate food prices, maintaining a strategic food reserve for stabilising prices of crucial grains and other food items,” the vice president said.

But while some see this as a welcome development, others say there are no concrete frameworks that would make it work, as it failed in the past. The Chief Executive Officer, Green Sahara Farms, Plateau State, Suleiman Dikwa, said the envisaged commodity board “is a repeat of the mistake we make in most of our policies, picking solutions wholesale and implementing them without taking cognisance of our environmental context.”

While noting that commodity boards are based on social and economic structures that drive the market, Dikwa said there is a fundamental flaw in the objectives of the proposed board, “we are no longer in the 1970s and 1980s when the Federal Government has capacity and intent to run the boards, which were any way abandoned due to corruption among other issues.

“The proposed commodity board has the potential to bring stability to food prices by continually assessing and regulating them. This could alleviate the burden on consumers and enhance overall economic predictability and the creation of a strategic food reserve for stabilising prices of commodities, basically a regulator.

“Let’s compare with Indian commodity board, the Indian take cognisance of their social and cultural context, including the large geography and people to deal with set up boards to play from production market enabling control and their choice is clear by focusing on particular crops, while Nigeria, with its desperate geography, population, and weak institutions, seeks to regulate chaos and control prices without input or key holding in the process to effect price control.”

He said the structure of the commodity economy right now starts with the farmer harvesting and selling to nearby markets, keeping their stock to eat and sell in the event of ill health or weddings or deaths.

“From the local market, it moves to the main market in the zone and to Kano or Lagos and exports, so how do you control the prices? Same scenarios play out in Thailand – the most successful smallholder farmer system in the world. Government’s intervention should be the buyers first, to protect the farmer and in the context the farmer operates.” Dikwa posited that there is enough food in the country currently, noting that, “what we have is an organised hysteria to develop a racket to fleece Nigeria.

“By now, we should recognise the patterns in our agro industry; every government takes a story and the so called associations of one crop or the other push for interventions using the associations and conniving or deceiving government of the day who releases funds to these political farmers. Here we are, the evidence is clear, we have not been able to solve the key aspects of food security – affordability and nutrition.
“We have enough food, but no enough money to buy it.”

On his part, the Managing Director of BAMA Farms, Lagos, Prince Wale Oyekoya, said, the national commodity board will control commodities’ prices to meet the international standard just like the country’s crude oil prices.

He said with the board, the country will continuously assess food prices, as well as maintain a strategic food reserve that will be used as a price stabilisation mechanism for critical grains and other food items, which would tackle irregularities in prices of agricultural produce.

“It’s a welcome idea, as it will address all the matters pertaining to food, water availability and affordability, but the president have to be careful so that the cabals does not hijack the policy and mess it up just like what played out during President Buhari’s regime.

“Also, the money saved from the fuel subsidy should be invested in the agricultural sector to improve the food production in the country such as – provision of land with title to the real farmers; mechanisation of the sector to attract youths; provision of security for the farmers and in all the aspects of value chain in the sector; and provision of storage facilities to curb spoilage and post-harvest loss among others.”