Nigeria’s food security begins before the farm

Food security is often discussed in Nigeria as though the central challenge were simply getting more Nigerians to cultivate more land. Governments announce agricultural programmes, distribute inputs, encourage farmers to increase production and set ambitious targets for domestic food supply. Yet the foundations of a productive agricultural economy are laid long before a farmer plants a seed and long before a harvested crop reaches a market. The latest Japanese support for Nigeria’s rice sector offers a useful reminder of that basic reality.

Japan has committed about 587 million Japanese yen, equivalent to approximately $3.5 million, to strengthen Nigeria’s rice-seed production system. The intervention is focused on the National Cereals Research Institute in Badeggi, Niger State, and includes support for facilities in Niger and Oyo states. The project is intended to improve the production of breeder and foundation rice seeds, with equipment and technical support forming part of the investment.

The significance of the intervention goes beyond its dollar value. Quality seed is one of the first links in the chain that determines whether a farmer can obtain a worthwhile harvest. A country can possess millions of hectares of cultivable land and a large farming population, yet still struggle to produce enough affordable food if farmers lack reliable access to quality seed, irrigation, fertiliser, mechanisation, extension services, finance and functioning markets.

Nigeria’s food-security debate has too often concentrated on the visible end of the problem. When food prices rise, attention naturally turns to what farmers are producing and how much they are producing. When shortages occur, the conversation shifts towards imports, tariffs, border controls or emergency interventions. Those measures may have their place, but a durable food system depends on whether the country can consistently raise productivity and move agricultural produce efficiently from farm to consumer. That is why investment in agricultural research deserves far greater attention.

The National Cereals Research Institute is not the sort of institution that usually generates the political excitement associated with a new road, bridge or major industrial project. Its work is considerably less visible. Yet the development and multiplication of improved crop varieties can have consequences across thousands of farms. A reliable supply of quality foundation seed gives seed producers and farmers the material required to obtain better-performing crops. The Japanese project therefore addresses a part of the agricultural system that consumers rarely see but that ultimately affects what they pay for food. This is precisely the kind of foundation Nigeria needs to strengthen.

The World Bank’s $500 million Nigeria Sustainable Agricultural Value-Chains for Growth project, approved earlier this year, makes a similar diagnosis. The programme is designed to improve smallholder productivity, strengthen agricultural value chains and create jobs while improving food and nutrition security. Its components include agricultural research and extension, improved and climate-resilient seeds, seed and fertiliser regulatory systems, early-generation seed supply, private-sector seed production, post-harvest handling, agro-processing and market access.

The convergence of these initiatives is instructive. Nigeria does not lack recognition of what needs to be done. The challenge is turning recognition into a coherent agricultural system that functions from research laboratory to farm, from farm to processor and from processor to consumer.

Seed is only the beginning. A farmer cannot make full use of improved seed without dependable water. Much of Nigerian agriculture remains exposed to rainfall variability, making farmers vulnerable to increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. Experience from irrigation projects supported by the World Bank demonstrates how improved water management can raise productivity. Its Transforming Irrigation Management in Nigeria programme expanded irrigation across tens of thousands of hectares, while subsequent work has sought to build on those gains. The World Bank has also noted that irrigation can substantially increase yields compared with rain-fed cultivation when properly managed.

The lesson is straightforward. Giving farmers better seed while leaving them exposed to unreliable rainfall only solves part of the problem.

The same applies to mechanisation. A farmer may have access to a high-quality variety and adequate water, yet struggle to cultivate or harvest efficiently because machinery is unavailable or unaffordable. Japan’s broader agricultural assistance in Nigeria illustrates how practical equipment can complement agricultural research. In July, the Japanese government announced the commissioning of power tillers and combine harvesters in Ekiti State under its Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects, with the equipment intended to modernise rice production. Harvesting is another point at which Nigeria loses value.

A crop does not become food security simply because it has been grown. It must survive harvesting, threshing, drying, storage, transportation and processing. A World Bank assessment of Nigeria’s rice value chain found that poor harvesting and on-farm drying practices contribute to substantial losses and lower rice quality. Farm-level losses during harvesting, threshing and winnowing were estimated at 9.5 per cent, compared with about 3 per cent in Vietnam, while overall loss and waste in the Nigerian rice value chain was estimated at nearly 25 per cent.

Those figures expose one of the contradictions in Nigeria’s food-security conversation. The country can spend money trying to produce more food while allowing a significant portion of what has already been produced to lose value through weaknesses after harvest. The answer therefore cannot be reduced to putting more land under cultivation. Nigeria needs a complete agricultural production system.

That means agricultural research institutions capable of developing varieties suited to local conditions and a changing climate. It means seed systems capable of multiplying and distributing those varieties at scale. It means effective regulation so that farmers can distinguish genuine quality seed from inferior products. It means irrigation infrastructure that allows productive farming beyond the limits imposed by rainfall. It means affordable mechanisation, extension officers who can transfer knowledge to farmers, access to finance and fertiliser, roads capable of moving harvests to markets, storage facilities that reduce avoidable losses and processing industries capable of converting agricultural output into higher-value products.

The country also needs a stronger connection between agricultural research and the farmers expected to benefit from it.

Research cannot remain concentrated within institutions while farmers continue to depend on outdated practices. A new variety sitting inside a research institute does little for national food security until it is multiplied, certified, distributed and adopted. Agricultural extension therefore deserves the same seriousness as agricultural research. The World Bank’s current AGROW programme recognises this by combining improved seeds with research, extension, digital advisory services, climate information and stronger market linkages. This systems approach matters even more as climate pressures increase.

Recent analysis by the World Bank found that partial crop losses in Nigeria increased from roughly 6 per cent of plots in 2018/19 to more than 20 per cent in 2023/24. Climate shocks, environmental stress and insecurity were among the factors driving the deterioration. A food-security strategy designed around yesterday’s climate and farming conditions will struggle to protect tomorrow’s food supply.

This is where improved seed becomes particularly important. Climate-resilient varieties can help farmers manage changing growing conditions, but they need to be supported by irrigation, weather information, soil management, extension and appropriate farming practices. A seed alone cannot compensate for an agricultural system that leaves farmers without the infrastructure needed to use it effectively. Nigeria’s food challenge is also too large to be treated as a purely agricultural problem.

Food prices affect household welfare, wages, inflation, nutrition and social stability. When agricultural productivity remains weak, consumers pay more and farmers do not necessarily earn more. When production is inadequate, the country becomes more vulnerable to import dependence and external price shocks. When farmers cannot reliably move produce to markets, both producers and consumers lose.

The consequences are already substantial. The Food and Agriculture Organisation warned in 2025 that 27.2 million Nigerians were facing hunger and that the figure could rise to 34.7 million during the June-August 2026 lean season without timely and coordinated interventions. That reality should give agricultural policy a much greater sense of urgency.

The Japanese grant is therefore worth viewing as more than a foreign-funded rice project. It represents an opportunity to examine what Nigeria itself chooses to prioritise. International partners can provide equipment, expertise and financing, but no external grant can substitute indefinitely for a domestic commitment to agricultural research and productive infrastructure. Nigeria must also be careful about how it measures success.

The success of the Japanese intervention should eventually be judged through outcomes: how much additional quality seed is produced, how many farmers gain access to it, whether yields improve, whether production becomes more resilient to climate shocks and whether the intervention strengthens a seed system capable of continuing without perpetual external support. The same principle should apply to the many agricultural programmes financed by government and development partners.

Nigeria has accumulated an impressive catalogue of agricultural initiatives over the years. What has been harder to establish is continuity. Programmes change with administrations. Institutions are reorganised. Promises are repeated. Farmers receive inputs under one programme and face shortages under another. Infrastructure is built without sufficient maintenance. Research generates knowledge that does not always reach commercial production. The country needs a shift from agricultural announcements to agricultural institutions.

Food security requires patience because many of its most important investments do not produce spectacular results within a political news cycle. A research programme may take years to produce a variety with meaningful commercial benefits. Irrigation infrastructure requires substantial capital and maintenance. Seed multiplication requires quality control. Extension systems require trained personnel. Storage and processing facilities require viable markets. These are investments whose value compounds over time. That is precisely why they deserve protection from short-term political thinking.

Nigeria should welcome Japan’s $3.5 million commitment and ensure that the project produces measurable, lasting benefits. It should also use the opportunity to confront a broader question: why should a country with Nigeria’s agricultural potential remain so vulnerable to food insecurity? The answer cannot simply be that Nigerian farmers need to produce more. They need the conditions that make higher productivity possible.

A farmer cannot be expected to solve inadequate research funding, weak seed systems, unreliable irrigation, poor roads, limited storage, insufficient mechanisation, insecurity and weak market access with determination alone. The responsibility for creating those conditions rests with the state, private investors, research institutions and development partners working within a coherent national framework. Nigeria has spent years telling its farmers to feed the nation. It now needs to build the system that allows them to do so.

That system begins long before the farm gate. It begins in research institutes such as Badeggi. It continues through the production and certification of quality seed, access to water and machinery, agricultural extension, storage, processing and transport. It ends where the citizen encounters the agricultural economy most directly: in the price, quality and availability of food. The Japanese investment in rice-seed production is therefore a small intervention with a much larger lesson.

Nigeria will not secure its food future simply by asking farmers to plant more. It will secure it by investing in the science, infrastructure, institutions and markets that enable every seed planted to produce more food, more reliably and at a cost Nigerians can afford.