President Bola Tinubu’s recent directive for a Federal Executive Council committee to “crash” food prices may sound like a quick fix to the hunger crisis, but it risks causing irreparable harm to Nigeria’s agricultural backbone, particularly in the North. While the intention to ease the burden on consumers is noble, the policy ignores the structural realities facing farmers and traders.
Already, the grain economy is in distress. The influx of cheap imports has made traders redundant, while farmers are forced to sell at a loss. Companies that once bought grain in bulk are no longer purchasing, leaving warehouses full and livelihoods broken. People may be celebrating that prices have gone down, but the reality is that millions of farmers are being quietly pushed towards unemployment.
The cost of production shows the real danger. A bag of urea fertiliser from Indorama or Dangote now sells for about ₦45,000, while a bag of maize fetches less than ₦30,000. In other words, one bag of maize cannot even buy a single bag of fertiliser. By the time you add land preparation, weeding, pesticides, harvesting and transport, farming becomes a guaranteed loss. For many farmers, it no longer makes sense to plant. If nothing changes, by next year countless farmers in the North will abandon their fields altogether and depend on cheap imports for survival. What looks like relief today could spiral into a crippling food crisis tomorrow.
This is why it is important to recall what worked in the past. Under the late President Muhammadu Buhari, fertiliser was subsidised and sold at a compulsory ₦5,500 per bag, with the price boldly printed on the sack. Farmers benefitted from the Anchor Borrowers Scheme, irrigation projects were revived, and rice milling industries mushroomed across the country. Those policies did not just lower food prices temporarily; they built capacity and made farming worthwhile.
Today, no serious action has been taken to address escalating input costs. Fertiliser remains out of reach, credit is scarce, and insecurity weighs heavily on farmers. Yet the focus is on pushing down consumer prices, a move that may bring temporary cheer but is ultimately destructive. If farmers continue to make losses, they will simply walk away from agriculture. The result will be shrinking food production, rising unemployment in rural areas, greater import dependence, and worsening insecurity.
Nigeria needs cheaper food, but the right way to achieve it is by lowering production costs and making distribution more efficient — not by impoverishing the very people who grow it. Real solutions lie in subsidising fertiliser and seeds, investing in irrigation and mechanisation, supporting local processing, and protecting farmers from unfair import competition.
The warning signs are there for anyone who cares to look: celebrating cheap food today while farmers abandon the fields is a recipe for disaster. Unless government changes course, the policy of crashing food prices will end up crashing Northern agriculture — and with it, Nigeria’s food security.
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