Nigeria's Wheat Plan Falters With Imports Set to Surge
- Farmers say government ended subsidies for seeds and inputs
- Country’s wheat imports seen expanding 9 percent next year
Photographer: Trevor Snapp/Bloomberg
Nigeria’s decades-old program to boost wheat production and reduce imports worth more than $4 billion a year has faltered with farmers cutting output because of soaring input costs, leaving foreign suppliers to meet rising domestic demand, officials and farmers’ groups said.
The latest harvest is coming in slowly and output will drop in the current season, Zakari Turaki, head of cereals research at the Lake Chad Research Institute, based in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, said in a phone interview. Many farmers say that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, which took office in 2015, suspended a program to support strategic crops, including wheat subsidies, causing many of them to abandon the grain.