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| Photo Credit: Victoria Mamza — Food industry stakeholder |
Nigeria is producing more food in many areas, yet consumers continue to face high prices at the market. The main bottleneck is not always the farm itself. It is the cost and difficulty of moving food from farms to consumers — through storage, processing, transport, and distribution.
Food industry stakeholder Victoria Mamza highlighted these issues in comments to Nigeria Info. She pointed to seasonality, inadequate storage, and transportation as persistent challenges across the supply chain.
Seasonality and the Cost of Storage
The price and availability of many agricultural products depend heavily on whether they are in season. During peak harvest, produce can be relatively cheap at the farm gate. Once the season ends, the costs of preserving and storing that produce are added to the final price.
“When the season ends, however, the cost of preserving and storing the produce is added to the price,” Mamza said. “The problem is actually not in how expensive or how hard it is. It’s more in preserving – storage, to be exact.”
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Without reliable cold storage and warehousing, large volumes of food spoil or must be sold quickly under pressure, reducing farmer returns while keeping consumer prices elevated later in the year.
Rising Logistics Costs and Supply Warnings
These comments come amid ongoing concerns about food availability. In July, Alexander Isong, President of the Organisation for Technology Advancement of Cold Chain in West Africa (OTACCWA), warned that Nigeria could face shortages of rice, tomatoes and other staples within three months.
Isong noted that rice production was projected to fall by about six per cent to roughly 8.3 million tonnes, with cultivated rice land potentially declining by seven per cent. He also highlighted sharply higher transport costs: moving a tonne of grain from Kano to Lagos had risen from about ₦45,000 to ₦70,000.
High logistics costs mean that even when farm-gate prices ease, the final retail price often does not.
Government View: Progress on Production, Gaps Remain
Agriculture and Food Security Minister Abubakar Kyari has stated that the government has made progress in reducing production costs. Speaking on ARISE NEWS on 18 September, he said production costs had come down and farm-gate prices had dropped considerably.
He acknowledged, however, that processing and other gaps between farms and consumers still need attention. In short, more food is being grown and farm-level prices have improved in some cases, but the middle of the chain — processing, storage, and transport — continues to drive up what shoppers pay.
Why Farm-Gate Cheap Does Not Equal Market Cheap
Mamza emphasised that the final price of food must cover farming, storage, warehousing and transportation.
“If you go to the farms in the north, in the south-south, in the south, you know, in all the places where food items are being cultivated, you find out that food items are relatively cheap up there,” she said. “But before you bring it to this part of the country, you factor in your cost of logistics, the price does increase significantly.”
This gap explains why increased production alone has not delivered sustained relief for consumers.
The Scale of Post-Harvest Losses
The losses after harvest remain enormous. OTACCWA estimates that Nigeria lost between 30 million and 40 million metric tonnes of food in 2025, valued at between ₦3.5 trillion and ₦5 trillion. These losses hit tomatoes, vegetables, fruits, dairy, meat, fish, root crops and other value chains particularly hard. Food that has already been grown and harvested is simply not reaching consumers efficiently.
Market traders point to additional pressures: rain damage, high fuel costs, difficult transportation, and the role of middlemen. Some distributors reportedly sell preferentially to certain middlemen, who then add significant mark-ups. Seasonal production patterns and transport difficulties faced by farmers further tighten supply at certain times of the year.
Inflation Context
These structural issues persist even as overall food inflation has shown some recent moderation. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, food inflation fell to 19.57 per cent year-on-year in August from 20.31 per cent in July. Monthly food inflation dropped sharply from 5.56 per cent to 1.02 per cent. While this indicates prices are rising more slowly, absolute price levels for many staples remain high for households.
What Needs to Change
For Mamza, simply increasing production will not solve the price problem.
“We already have the infrastructure. We’re a producing nation, a country with arable land,” she said. “We just need more financing.”
She is calling for greater financing across the entire food value chain, with tailored funding models for farmers, processors, logistics operators and storage businesses. Better cold-chain infrastructure, improved rural roads, more efficient transport, and reduced post-harvest waste would allow more of the food already produced to reach markets at lower cost.
As Nigeria moves into another major harvest period, the central challenge is increasingly what happens after food leaves the farm. Whether that produce can be stored, processed and transported efficiently will determine whether consumers finally see more affordable prices.
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