Balancing the Basket: Empowering Farmers While Feeding the Hungry

 As Nigeria continues to grapple with a historic food crisis and rising inflation, a chorus of elite agricultural voices has emerged, attacking government efforts to subsidize food for the poor. Their claim? That subsidies undercut profitability, distort markets, and discourage production.

But these complaints, often loudest from well-connected commercial farm owners and ex-officials turned "agribusiness experts," deserve a critical interrogation — not sympathy.

Empowerment Efforts Are Already Underway

Let it be known: the Nigerian government is already firmly committed to agricultural empowerment. Recent policies show a deep investment in mechanized farming, infrastructure, and private-sector led reform:

In June 2025, Nigeria signed a $1 billion agriculture modernization deal with Brazil, designed to equip farmers with mechanized tools, training centers, and service hubs.

The National Agribusiness Policy Mechanism (NAPM) launching this year aims to connect real-time farm data to government action, ensuring tailored, scalable support.

Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) are being established in places like Oyo, connecting smallholder farmers to markets and agro-processing.

Vice President Kashim Shettima reaffirmed government’s focus on affordable credit, tech-enabled agriculture, and public-private partnerships — not wasteful handouts.

These are not signs of a government ignoring the agricultural sector. Quite the opposite.

But Hunger Cannot Wait for Harvest

While long-term reforms are welcome, Nigerians are hungry now.

Over 33 million Nigerians face food insecurity according to a recent joint government-UN report. This crisis is not theoretical—it’s visible in every market, in every IDP camp, and on the faces of children too young to understand inflation.

So when government steps in with targeted subsidies, school feeding programs, or direct food assistance, it is not sabotaging agriculture — it is saving lives.

Tough Questions for the Agitators

To those commercial agriculturalists criticizing subsidies, the question is simple:

Where were you when Nigerians were starving?

What effort did you make to ease hunger when food prices soared?

Did you not hoard food commodities to drive up profits in the past?

Despite decades of subsidy, mechanization schemes, and tax waivers, what percentage of Nigeria’s food demand can you meet without importation?

Why have you failed to survive competition with overseas food producers, despite receiving billions in government support?

If the answer to these questions is silence, then your opposition to subsidies is not about policy—it is about profit.

Feed the People, Ignore the Noise

Government must ignore these narrow interest groups and focus on feeding the people by any means necessary. The role of government is not to pad margins for middlemen, but to ensure no Nigerian goes to bed hungry.

These vocal agitators are a handful. Many are beneficiaries of government contracts, grants, and even looted public funds. They do not represent Nigeria’s food producers — they represent themselves.

Real farmers — subsistence farmers in Zamfara, Benue, Kano, and Ebonyi — are not protesting food subsidies. Why? Because they know what it means to till the land with their own hands. They eat what they grow. They’re meeting their costs through hard work and wisdom, not political lobbying.

Conclusion:

Subsidies and empowerment are not opposites. The government can—and must—do both: support farmers for the future, and feed the poor today.

Let the critics moan. Nigeria must balance the basket, not break it.

Jafaru Muhammed

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