Cheap Food Today, Costly Crisis Tomorrow? Experts Warn Nigeria Against Ignoring Farmers as Prices Fall

The recent easing of food inflation in Nigeria may appear to signal relief for consumers, but agribusiness experts are warning that the trend could mask deeper structural risks within the country’s food system. According to industry leaders, falling farm gate prices when combined with persistently high production costs could discourage farmers, shrink output, and trigger a renewed food crisis from mid-2026.
The President of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG), Arc. Kabir Ibrahim, has urged the federal government to urgently revive the Guaranteed Minimum Price (GMP) policy as a stabilisation tool to protect smallholder farmers and safeguard national food security. He argued that the current situation represents a dangerous imbalance: consumers benefit from lower food prices, while farmers absorb the losses.

From an analytical standpoint, Ibrahim’s warning highlights a classic supply-side risk. While moderation in food inflation is often celebrated as a macroeconomic win, it becomes unsustainable if producers cannot recover their costs. High prices of fertilisers, agro-chemicals, and other inputs mean many smallholder farmers are operating below breakeven levels. As a result, he cautioned that a significant number may be unable or unwilling to return for the 2026 farming season.
Such a withdrawal, he noted, would likely reverse recent gains in food prices. Reduced production would tighten supply, pushing inflation higher in line with basic economic principles. In this context, today’s low food prices could be laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s scarcity.
Ibrahim argued that a revived GMP framework could serve as a pre-emptive policy response.

By guaranteeing minimum prices for key staple crops, the government could provide farmers with income certainty, encourage continued production, and prevent sudden supply shocks. He stressed that the policy should be regionally balanced, targeting staple crops across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones to reflect diverse production strengths and consumption patterns.
Beyond price guarantees, the NABG president emphasised the need for complementary interventions to reduce the cost of inputs. Without addressing fertiliser and agro-chemical prices, he said, price support alone would be insufficient. In his view, the combined approach of price stabilisation and input cost reduction would help sustain production levels and avert a food crisis between 2026 and 2027.

Stakeholder coordination emerged as another critical pillar of the proposed policy revival. Ibrahim warned that without broad-based buy in from farmers, input suppliers, aggregators, and policymakers the GMP programme could fail. He called for structured consultations to determine fair and realistic benchmark prices, particularly for staples such as maize, rice, sorghum, and cassava. Transparent entry-point pricing, he argued, would improve market confidence and guide effective government intervention.
He further proposed leveraging large-scale producers and commodity aggregators for procurement, with government-supported stocks redistributed through food banks and targeted programmes for vulnerable Nigerians. Such an approach, he said, could balance farmer support with consumer protection, while improving accountability in public market interventions.

Although intervening in the market during a period of moderating inflation may appear counterintuitive, Ibrahim maintained that it is economically necessary. Allowing farmers to exit the sector due to sustained losses, he warned, could have far-reaching economic and political consequences.
In essence, the call to revive the GMP policy reframes the food inflation debate: low prices are only beneficial if they are sustainable. Without deliberate action to protect producers, Nigeria risks trading short-term consumer relief for long-term food insecurity.