Owing to the apparent recent economic decay in the country, the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) Oyo state, has predicted a possible increase in food prices due to the relative hike in Costa of farm inputs.
In an interview with journalists in Ibadan on Wednesday, the chairman of the associayion; Mr. John Olateru, expressed concern that the high cost of inputs could impair farmers’ operations, influencing the prices of their products.
He observed that farm input prices, such as fertilizers and chemicals, are rising beyond the grasp of smallholder farmers, who make up the majority of the country’s farming workforce.
“Prices of chemicals are now more than triple of what they used to be; the same for fertilisers, while land preparation has gone from N5,000 to between N12,000 and N15,000 per hectare.
“The cost of cultivating farmlands has gone out of control, and this will affect the prices of the items that will be planted,” Olateru said.
Olateru discusses the difficulty farmers experience as a result of the occasional scarcity of foreign exchange for buying farm inputs, expressing his unhappiness with what he regarded as lengthy procedures for farmers to obtain exchange rates.
“Another problem is that on everything you import, there is 7.5 per cent VAT that you have to pay. There is also the five per cent minimum duty that you must pay on importation of tractors and other things.
“If you add 7.5 per cent with five per cent, that gives you 12.5 per cent duty on what you are importing, while the official Forex is not available.
“All these will have a multiplier effect on the prices of farmers’ outputs.
“When people are complaining about high prices of food commodities, they may not know the factors that are driving the costs,” he added.
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