The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has issued what may be the most urgent policy warning in Nigeria's agricultural sector this year, calling on the Federal Government to immediately establish a National Farm Price Stabilisation and Farmer Income Protection Framework to prevent what it describes as the potential collapse of the country's agriculture sector.
The call was made in a policy brief signed by CPPE Chief Executive Officer, Dr Muda Yusuf, and released against the backdrop of a sharp and sustained decline in the prices of major staple food commodities across the country. According to Premium Times, the brief acknowledged that the Federal Government's recent food security measures have delivered short-term relief to consumers through lower food prices and moderated food inflation. However, it warned that the steep fall in prices of key agricultural commodities has inflicted heavy losses on farmers and investors across the agricultural value chain.
The core of CPPE's argument is that Nigeria is now experiencing a dangerous paradox. According to Guardian, the policy document warned that the welfare gains from cheaper food have been profound and should be acknowledged, but that the cost to farmers and other investors across the agricultural value chain is equally high and cannot be ignored. The organisation noted that consumers are celebrating falling prices while the producers who grow the nation's food are suffering severe financial losses.
Nairametrics reported that CPPE identified the recent surge in grain imports as the immediate trigger for the collapse in farm product prices across the country. The import drive was adopted as an emergency response to extreme food inflation, but the think tank warned that imports alone do not explain the depth of price instability being experienced by farmers. CPPE pointed to weak storage infrastructure, poor logistics, limited access to reliable market information, and the absence of effective price risk management tools as structural factors that worsen seasonal price volatility and leave farmers exposed to sharp market swings year after year.
The framework proposed by CPPE contains several specific, actionable recommendations. According to ThisDay, a key pillar is the introduction of Minimum Guaranteed Prices (MGP) — or price floors — for four selected priority crops: maize, rice (paddy), sorghum, and soybeans. CPPE stressed that this system should not become an open-ended government purchase programme but should operate strictly as a stabilising backstop. When market prices fall below the support price, government would intervene through licensed agencies and aggregators to purchase at the floor price.
Business Post reported that CPPE also called for urgent reform of Nigeria's Strategic Grain Reserves, recommending a shift to a professionally managed buffer stock system that buys during harvest periods and releases stocks during lean seasons to stabilise prices. The organisation identified the lack of liquidity among farmers as a major driver of distress sales, urging nationwide expansion of the warehouse receipt system. Under such a system, farmers would store produce in certified warehouses and use receipts as collateral for loans, allowing them to sell when prices improve rather than dumping their harvest immediately at depressed rates.
TV360 reported that Dr Yusuf further emphasised the need for investment in storage infrastructure, cold-chain systems, and agro-logistics, noting that farm price stabilisation is impossible without addressing these deficits. He also called for the expansion of agricultural insurance schemes, including weather-index and revenue insurance pilots, alongside predictable trade safeguards to prevent import-driven price crashes while complying with regional trade obligations.
Leadership reported that Dr Yusuf called for a recalibration of existing policies to ensure that farmers can continue to operate effectively, rural incomes are safeguarded, and investor confidence is sustained, while keeping food accessible to Nigerian households. He warned that recent surges in food imports, particularly of staples like rice, maize, and soybeans, have created significant challenges within the agricultural investment landscape, and that while consumers may benefit from lower prices, the long-term implications for farmers are concerning — potentially leading to decreased production, diminished incentives, and a return to cycles of scarcity and higher prices.
The timing of CPPE's intervention is particularly significant. As Nigeria celebrates the historic achievement of single-digit food inflation for the first time in over 14 years, the warning from one of the country's most respected economic policy think tanks serves as a reminder that headline inflation numbers do not tell the whole story. The very forces driving prices down for consumers — massive food imports, harvest gluts without adequate storage, and collapsing farm-gate prices — are simultaneously destroying the economic viability of farming for millions of producers.
At FoodPrices, this tension between consumer relief and farmer viability has been central to our coverage for months. Our market data shows exactly what CPPE describes: prices of key staples across Lagos markets and beyond are coming down, but farmers are reporting that their revenues have collapsed while input costs remain painfully high. Without a structured mechanism to protect farm incomes while preserving consumer gains, Nigeria risks a cycle where today's cheap food leads to tomorrow's abandoned farms, which leads to the day after tomorrow's food shortage. CPPE's proposed framework — minimum guaranteed prices, reformed grain reserves, warehouse receipts, better storage, and agricultural insurance — represents a comprehensive policy toolkit that deserves serious attention from the Federal Government. The question is whether policymakers will act before the damage to farmer confidence becomes irreversible.