As the 2023 rainy season begins in many parts of the country, the continued hike in the price of fertiliser has remained a source of worry to many farmers in the country.

The farmers are afraid that they may not recover their capitals, let alone profit, after committing a lot of resources as a result of the high cost of inputs this farming season.

Smallholder farmers are the most affected. And some of them are considering giving up on the system, or better still, reduce the size of their farmlands this year.

“We have already given up on the system. We had some hope in this government because they subsidised the price of fertiliser, but now, things are worse than before. I have two hectares of farm and I relied on them to feed my family, but I can only cultivate one-third of the farm,” a farmer from Kura in Kano State, Ayuba Manya, said.

Another farmer, Musa Auwalu in Bunkure, said many smallholder farmers were giving out large parts of their farms to wealthy individuals for some token as they could not afford to purchase inputs that would suffice them for successful crop plantation and harvesting.

He said the situation had turned many of them into labourers, with few or no crops to take home from their farms.

As one of the major farm inputs, fertiliser plays a pivotal role to good yield. Experts said although it is next after good seed, no farm produce can grow and produce good yield without it.

In a visit to some of the fertiliser markets in Kano, it was found that the commodity is witnessing a hike in price.

NPK 20-10-10 is usually priced from N15,000 to N17,000. Urea is sold between N21,000 and N22,000. Golden NPK is also sold at N25,000.

A simple calculation for an average farmer who owns a hectare of rice that normally consumes eight bags of fertiliser is that it would cost nearly N156,000. In a hectare, an average farmer can get between 30 and 40 sacks of paddy, depending on the seed and process adopted.

However, data from the International Fertiliser Development Centre showed that Nigeria imported 706,922 metric tonnes of fertilizer in 2021, up from the 429,303 imported in 2020, mainly diammonium phosphate, muriate of potash and granular ammonium sulphate.

Daily Trust on Sunday gathered that at the beginning of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the government entered an agreement with fertiliser blending companies in Nigeria to supply raw materials from countries like Morocco, Russia, and Ukraine for them to blend for the government to sell to farmers at a subsidised rate.

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Source: Daily Trust Newspaper 

https://dailytrust.com/locals-in-kano-rent-out-farmlands-over-high-cost-of-fertiliser/