Stakeholders advocate market access solutions to reduce Nigeria’s agricultural waste

By Cynthia Alo

At the backdrop of severe infrastructure gaps, some stakeholders in the agric value chain, including the Chief Executive Officer of Rashak Farms and Agro-Allied Limited, Rahmah Aderinoye and Executive Director of Community Action for Food Security, Azeez Salawu, have called for a paradigm shift from traditional storage interventions toward solving market access barriers to curb agricultural waste.

This is even as they urged financial institutions and governments at the sub-national to prioritise structured off-taker agreements and consistent policies over continuous farmer training programmes.

Speaking on Sunrise Daily on Channels TV on Saturday, the stakeholders analysed the systemic blockages driving the nation’s N3.7 trillion agricultural wastage.

Chief Executive Officer of Rashak Farms and Agro-Allied Limited, Rahmah Aderinoye, stated that Nigeria’s food security crisis cannot be solved by asking smallholders to store perishables when there are no clear channels to off-take the products.