Nigeria & Importing Food: The Myth of Self-Sufficiency
This article was first published in November 2019 on another website when the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd.) was justifying the closure of our land borders, using the desire for food self-sufficiency as justification. Although those borders have been opened since December 2020, the belief that Nigeria can be self-sufficient in food production remains strong not just among our policymakers but also among the Nigerian public. Thus, the points I make in this article remain important and relevant.
Every time the Federal Government introduces a policy to boost agricultural production, it is accompanied by a statement around how we need to be self-sufficient in food production and not be importing food from other countries. In the most recent case, the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Hameed Ali added that depending on countries for food can leave us at a disadvantage should we break off diplomatic relations with the country.
But let us start by asking: is there really anything as a country that is self-sufficient in food production? For a country to be defined as self-sufficient in food production, it means that the country produces all its food. This is a utopian idea as there is no country that does not import food to an extent — not even North Korea, which has the ignominious honour of being the most isolationist nation on earth.
There is also the claim that unless we are able to feed ourselves (i.e. not import food), we will not be able to grow economically. This is clearly false seeing as the top four economies in the world — United States, China, Japan and Germany — are also the top four food importers in the world.
Do not get me wrong — there is nothing with food self-sufficiency, and yes, Ali is right in some ways that producing your own food will not leave you at the mercy of those you import food from — something which Qatar had to experience, for example, after it fell out with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and the Maldives in 2017.
But at the same time, there are three major reasons for which a country might be importing food: it could be due to a limitation of land and water; due to economic crises, war, famine or drought; or due to choice in what the country desires to eat.
However, importing a large amount of food does not mean that the country is food insecure; sadly, Nigeria, despite the fact that it spends about N7.92 trillion annually importing food (mostly rice, wheat, sugar and fish), 13 million people suffered from hunger as at 2016 and one in four Nigerians are food insecure as at 2017, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) which lists Nigeria as one of 41 countries in the world in “need of external food assistance.”
This means that our priority should be about ensuring food security — that food is available, safe to eat, and stable in supply. Such food security does not take into account the origin of the food — besides, importing food comes with the advantage of accessing cheaper food that other countries are more effective at producing, which is important considering that Nigeria had some of the highest food prices in the world even before the ban on foreign exchange at official rates for food imports and the closing of the land borders. Not only that, imports can ensure adequate supply in case of shortages, like when Nigeria’s tomato stock was almost eliminated entirely by the tomato Ebola pest. With rising climate change which will put food supply at risk due to unpredictable weather patterns and insecurity which affects the ability of farmers to produce food, imports become even more important.
But since the Federal Government has instead chosen food self-sufficiency as its objective, let us examine, even in summary, why Nigeria has not been able to achieve that: our agriculture has a low output (e.g. while farmers in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe produce between four to seven tonnes per hectare for millet and sorghum, their counterparts in Nigeria get 1.19 and 0.08 tonnes per hectare for these crops respectively). Our agriculture is also dominated by low technology, it is labour intensive, and subsistence farmers (which make up the bulk of our farmers) use outdated methods and low-quality seeds.
Not only that, there is a lack of safe water for irrigation, making our farming highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture. To compound matters, poor rural roads network and post-harvest and storage facilities mean as much as 20–30% of grains produced, 30–50% of tubers, and upwards of 50% of fruits and vegetables are lost before they reach our dinner tables. As of 2017, Nigeria lost up to $9bn in food due to a lack of post-harvest preservation.
What does this mean?
Simply put, Nigeria’s inability to become self-sufficient in food production (which is not even a glamorous objective, by the way) or achieve food security (which should be the objective) is not because it imports food. And while the government and its supporters will be eager to point to schemes such as the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme and the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme which are both driven by the Central Bank of Nigeria, their success is far from enough to justify policies that will make food imports far more expensive, especially when the population is already groaning from high food prices.
It is akin to shooting oneself in the foot.
