The Federal Government has begun distributing processing and post-harvest equipment to rice and cassava farmers in Nasarawa State — 95 pieces of equipment, from rice milling machines to cassava fryers, meant to reduce the losses that destroy Nigerian food before it ever reaches a market stall.
The intervention, flagged off by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, during a two-day working visit to Lafia, is part of the FGN/IFAD Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP) — a joint initiative between the Nigerian government and the International Fund for Agricultural Development that operates across nine states. The equipment was distributed to smallholder farmers, agro-processors, and marketers, including persons with disability.
"Agriculture must deliver results — food for our people, jobs for our youth, income for our farmers, and stability for our nation," Kyari said.
The minister's statement is correct in principle. But the scale of the problem it's trying to address tells a different story about how far Nigeria still has to go.
Sources: ThisDay Live (February 9, 2026), Arise News (February 6, 2026), Federal Ministry of Information (February 6, 2026)
What Was Distributed
The equipment breakdown tells you exactly where the investment is focused: rice and cassava processing. In Nasarawa, the government distributed 46 tricycles, 16 rice steam parboiling machines, 18 rice milling machines, 10 rice destoning machines, 3 rice colour sorting machines, 11 digital weighing scales, 2 rice dehusking machines, 4 cassava grating machines, 4 manual cassava fryers, 3 automated fryers, and 3 hydraulic pressers.
Kyari also commissioned several VCDP processing centres in the state, including the Ashangwa Value Chain Innovation Rice Processing centre and the Gidi Gidi Garri Processing Centre.
Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, who has aligned the state's agricultural programmes with President Tinubu's Renewed Hope Agenda, emphasised why the focus on processing matters: "Because of the post-harvest wastages, it is very, very important to look at the complete value chain."
The VCDP's National Programme Coordinator, Dr. Fatima Aliyu, said the programme has so far reached over 150,000 farmers across nine participating states — Anambra, Benue, Ebonyi, Enugu, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, and Taraba — and created 11,890 permanent agribusiness jobs.
Sources: New Telegraph (February 5, 2026), The Authority (February 5, 2026), Arise News (February 6, 2026)
The ₦3.5 Trillion Problem
To understand why 95 pieces of equipment in one state matters — and why it is nowhere near enough — you need to see the full picture of what Nigeria loses after harvest.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, post-harvest losses range between 5 and 20 percent for grains, 20 percent for fish, and between 50 and 60 percent for tubers, fruits, and vegetables. USAID has stated that approximately 50 percent of fresh agricultural produce in Nigeria is lost at the post-harvest level. The FAO has confirmed a similar figure.
In monetary terms, Nigeria's annual post-harvest losses amount to an estimated ₦3.5 trillion — a figure that BusinessDay found is three times higher than the country's combined five-year federal agricultural budget of ₦1.13 trillion, and over nine times the government's agriculture budget for 2024 alone.
That ₦3.5 trillion in wasted food is not an abstract number. It is food that was grown, harvested, and then lost before it could reach consumers — because of inadequate storage, poor transportation infrastructure, lack of processing equipment, and the absence of cold chain systems across the supply network. Every kilogram of tomatoes that rots in a market, every bag of rice that spoils in an open-air store, every tuber of yam that deteriorates on a bad road — these losses reduce supply and push up prices for the food that does survive.
Sources: BusinessDay (September 2024), Nairametrics (April 2024), Punch (October 2024)
How Post-Harvest Losses Drive Food Prices
The connection between post-harvest waste and the prices Nigerians pay at the market is direct and measurable.
Consider tomatoes, which experience the highest spoilage percentage of any major crop at roughly 48 percent. FoodPrices Nigeria's Inflation Tracker shows tomatoes as one of the most volatile items across Lagos markets — swinging from massive spikes during supply shortages to sharp corrections when fresh supply arrives. In January 2026, tomato prices surged before correcting 51% in February. These extreme cycles are partly a function of seasonality, but they are amplified by the fact that nearly half of all tomatoes harvested never make it to market.
The same dynamic plays out across the food system. When beans prices surged 48% in February 2026 — defying a deflation trend across every other staple — the signal points to supply-side tightness. Post-harvest losses in the northern and Middle Belt states where beans are produced compound whatever production shortfalls already exist from insecurity, climate shocks, or input cost pressures.
As one agricultural expert told BusinessDay: "Reducing post-harvest losses will help Nigeria increase its food supply without necessarily increasing its production." That is the core insight. Nigeria does not need to grow more food to feed its people — it needs to stop losing the food it already grows.
Sources: BusinessDay (September 2024), Medium — Grace Wemembu (October 2025), FoodPrices Nigeria Inflation Tracker
What the VCDP Has Actually Achieved
The programme distributing this equipment is not new, and it has a track record worth examining. The FGN/IFAD Value Chain Development Programme has been operating since 2014, initially in six states before expanding to nine with additional IFAD financing.
By the numbers, the VCDP has increased rice yields from the national average of 2–2.5 tonnes per hectare to between 5 and 6 tonnes per hectare for participating farmers. Cassava yields have reached approximately 30 tonnes per hectare. The programme has generated over $40 million for more than 16,000 rice farmers through 878 formal agreements with off-takers, and has created 11,890 permanent agribusiness jobs — 3,128 for women, 2,710 for men, and 6,052 for youth.
In Nasarawa specifically, the programme recorded a bumper harvest during the 2025 farming season, with the state coordinator reporting rice yields of 4.5 metric tonnes per hectare and improved cassava yields of 2 metric tonnes per hectare, up from significantly lower baselines.
These are real results. But they also expose the gap. The VCDP targets 150,000 farmers across nine states. Nigeria has an estimated 70 million people in rural areas, the majority of whom depend on agriculture. The programme's challenges, as identified by its own coordinator, include insecurity, climate change impacts, high input costs driven by inflation, and low literacy levels among farmers — the same structural problems that continue to drive food price volatility nationwide.
Sources: NAN via NAN News (October 2025), EnviroNews Nigeria (December 2025), Punch (December 2025)
What's Missing
The equipment distribution in Nasarawa addresses a real constraint — the absence of processing infrastructure — but the broader post-harvest loss problem extends well beyond what rice milling machines and cassava fryers can solve.
Nigeria's cold chain infrastructure is virtually nonexistent for most of the food supply network. Motorable rural roads that could reduce transit times and crop damage are still absent from large parts of the agricultural hinterland. Storage facilities at both farm and market levels remain grossly inadequate. The national silos system, once conceived as a strategic reserve, has deteriorated.
The government's own National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) targets a 50% reduction in post-harvest losses. The African Union's Malabo Declaration set a target of halving post-harvest losses by 2025 — a deadline that has already passed with Nigeria nowhere close to meeting it.
Meanwhile, the January 2026 input distribution in Kwara — power tillers, herbicides, liquid fertilizers, knapsack sprayers, and water pumps — shows the government is spreading interventions across states. But without a coordinated national strategy that addresses cold chain, storage, transportation, and processing simultaneously, individual equipment drops will continue to be overwhelmed by the scale of the problem.
Ninety-five pieces of equipment for one state is a start. ₦3.5 trillion in annual losses is the finish line — and it is a very long way from here.
Sources: Premium Times (August 2024), Dawn Commission (NATIP/Malabo targets), Quick News Africa (January 29, 2026)
Track real-time food prices, inflation data, and market intelligence at foodprices.ng. The FoodPrices Inflation Tracker monitors month-over-month price changes across Lagos markets — visit foodprices.ng/inflation for the latest data.