Food Security: Experts worry over 40% post-harvest losses

As Nigeria struggles with food insecurity, stakeholders in the agricultural sector have expressed concerns about the large scale of post-harvest losses by farmers in the country.

The experts, who noted that about 30-40 percent of agricultural produce is lost in the food supply chain annually, also called on the National Assembly to expedite action on the Agricultural Extension Service Bill, 2024.

They raised the concerns on Wednesday in Abuja at a conference on Digitizing Agricultural Knowledge to Scale Advisory Service for Rural Farmers’ Economic Wellbeing in Nigeria, organised by The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in collaboration with Extension Africa.

The Agricultural Extension Service Bill, 2024, aims to strengthen agricultural extension services that will support smallholder farmers to improve productivity and ensure food security in the country.

Furthermore, the bill targets strengthening the capacity of extension workers to deliver advanced, technology-driven and demand-oriented services.

Speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the event, Country Director of AGRA, Dr. Rufus Idris, said Nigeria’s growing population and changing lifestyle patterns have led to increased demand for food, which he said the current production levels in the agriculture sector cannot meet.

Idris stressed the need for a multi-faceted approach to address the challenges facing food security, including increasing productivity and reducing post-harvest losses.

“We have a huge population that’s also still fast-growing, and the level of production of food is not catching up with the demand based on the increased population, and also the changing lifestyle and patterns.

“So what we need to do as a government and also as players and partners is to increase the production level. And to do that, we must increase productivity at all levels.

“Productivity in ensuring that farmers have access to the right kind of seed that can improve the yield of production per hectare, and also animals also get productivity increases in that space.

“We must be able to also ensure that farmers can actually reduce the wastages that happen from post-harvest loss to ensure that even the food that’s being produced, we can reduce the wastages. For instance, now we have about 30 percent to 40 percent of food produced in this country that’s going to waste.”

He also urged the National Assembly to expedite action on the Agricultural Extension Service Bill, which he said aims to improve extension service delivery in Nigeria.

He noted that the current farmer-extension agent ratio of 10,000:1 is not sufficient.

“Instead, one extension agent should be servicing 500 or fewer farmers to ensure efficiency in the quality of the service that is being delivered to smallholder farmers in Nigeria,” he said.

Idris noted that the idea of digitizing extension knowledge and content would make extension services more attractive to young people who are more inclined to digital technologies.

He said it would also enable them to offer better services to smallholder farmers, including linking farmers to improved seeds, practices, and varieties, as well as ensuring they have access to real-time information to combat climate change.

President of the Nigerian Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (NIFAAS), Dr. Fadlullah Olayiwola Issa, on his part, expressed concerns that agriculture in Nigeria reveals a situation where the country is desperately looking for solutions.

Noting that extension service was supposed to be the backbone of agriculture, he warned that all amounts spent on research would be a waste if the technology needed does not get to the field.

“So who takes it to the field? That particular chain, as long as it is broken, we are not going anywhere. The government must realize that we don’t have anywhere to go if extension is not functional. And that is why it must be a top priority,” he said.

According to him, research institutes cannot meet the needs of farmers because their language is not understood by the farmers.

He added: “It is extension that picks the technology, processes it in a manner that every farmer will understand, and puts it in languages that are understandable by every farmer all over the country. You know the complexity of our country in terms of languages. That is why it is so important that the government must support extension adequately.”

Giving reasons lawmakers should pass the Agricultural Extension Service Bill, Issa said extension, as a crucial component of the agriculture value chain, must be regulated.

“If not, we’ll be going back to zero because the whole thing can be in shambles at the end of the day. So I urge the National Assembly to expedite action in passing the bill so that it can become a reality and extension can take its place of pride in the nation’s agriculture value chain,” he stated.

Managing Director of Extension Africa, Tajudeen Yahaya, blamed the extension service gap in the country on an inadequate extension workforce, saying it is improper for one extension officer to be serving over 10,000 farmers.

Stressing the importance of digitization in extension service delivery, he said the country needs to move beyond paper-based information and provide video and audio content that explains better what these things are to farmers.