The Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro) has declared Nigeria’s agriculture sector to be in a deep structural crisis, warning that farmers have lost nearly ₦5 trillion in productive capital over the past two years due to policy-induced price crashes, poor weather forecasting and severe market distortions.
In a statement issued by its Executive Director, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, the organisation said the losses amounted to direct capital destruction at the producer level and excluded wider economic consequences such as inflationary pressures, GDP contraction, foreign exchange strain and security-related costs.
“What has already happened is the liquidation of farmer capital,” PeacePro said.
According to the group, Nigeria failed to stabilise food prices between 2024 and 2025. Instead, poorly timed policy interventions, price suppression measures, weak market coordination and what it described as unreliable weather forecasts by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) forced farmers to sell produce below cost, eroding the capital required for subsequent production cycles.
“This was not a market correction. It was a policy shock that transferred value away from producers,” the statement added.
PeacePro noted that while an estimated 38 to 40 million Nigerians are engaged in agriculture, the most severe impact was felt by market-facing producers rather than subsistence farmers, although subsistence farmers were also adversely affected, particularly by misleading weather forecasts.
The worst-hit group, it said, comprises between six and eight million small and medium-scale commercial farmers, price-taking producers with limited storage capacity, and farmers involved in grains, tubers, vegetables and legumes that supply urban and regional food markets.
Hamzat explained that repeated price collapses across two consecutive production cycles resulted in aggregate capital losses approaching ₦5 trillion, even under conservative estimates.
He described the scale of the damage as comparable to a financial sector collapse, noting, however, that the crisis unfolded quietly in rural communities rather than in banks or capital markets.
“This crisis did not happen in banks or stock markets. It happened quietly, on farms and in rural communities,” he said.
Hamzat warned that depleted farmer capital would likely lead to reduced planting in 2026, lower domestic food supply, higher food prices, rising rural poverty and increased social instability.
PeacePro urged the Federal Government to publicly acknowledge the scale of agricultural capital destruction and immediately shift policy away from short-term price suppression towards producer protection, capital preservation and market stability.
“No country can bankrupt its farmers and remain food secure. Nigeria will soon pay the price for policies that treated farmers as shock absorbers for inflation, if they are not urgently corrected,” the statement added.
