A historical review of fertilizer policies in Nigeria

In its endeavor to improve agricultural productivity, food security, and livelihoods, Nigeria has pursued several approaches in fertilizer policy. Most of these approaches revolved around variants of government-financed subsidy programs. This paper assesses the history of fertilizer policies in Nigeria and the tenets of the fertilizer policies in two recent national agricultural policy documents – the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) (2010/11-2016) and the Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP) (2016-2020). Our review results show that despite some recent achievements in ATA and APP, Nigerian fertilizer policies have lacked consistency and continuity, which in turn affected the functioning of supply chains, logistics channels including distribution costs, fertilizer prices, farmers’ access to the input, and, ultimately, application rates and crop productivity. Thus, though Nigeria is one of the leading producers of fertilizer in sub-Saharan Africa, fertilizer consumption and farm application rates are generally low (below 20 percent of the application rate per hectare (ha) in developed countries). Moreover, several exogenous factors including poor infrastructure (especially bad roads), credit constraints, extension services, high fertilizer prices, lack of access to information, security threats, and lack of quality control or assurance also affect the functioning of fertilizer supply chains in Nigeria. The newly adopted national agricultural policy (National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) promises to build on ATA and APP and gradually deregulate the fertilizer sector to incentivize private sector investments in local fertilizer production and distribution. NATIP also requires the incorporation of practical approaches to tackle important exogenous constraints. We anticipate NATIP’s commitment to policy continuity and addressing exogenous challenges will bring efficiency and effectiveness to the fertilizer sector in Nigeria

Seed certification and maize, rice and cowpea productivity in Nigeria: An insight based on nationally representative farm household data and seed company location data

Despite the potential importance of seed quality to agricultural productivity growth, many governments in sub-Saharan Africa lack the capacity to expand quality assurance systems even where there is expressed interest. This study aims to evidence the value of quality assurance systems with an analysis of efforts to produce and distribute certified seed in Nigeria. We assess the associations between quantities of certified seeds produced and spatial variations in production locations proxied by headquarter locations of seed companies producing certified seeds, on the one hand, with spatial variations in the use of certified seed, yields, and output at the farm level, on the other hand. Our analysis covers three crops that are important to food security in Nigeria: maize, rice, and cowpea. Our analysis integrates information on seed quantities produced and locations of seed companies with nationally representative panel data from a survey of farm households and spatially explicit rainfall and temperature data. We find a positive relationship between certified seed production in proximity to farm households and farm-level use of certified seeds, yields, and output, although this effect is diminishing at the margin. These diminishing marginal effects may be partly due to two factors. First, the yield gains from certified seeds tend to vary considerably within each state, suggesting that either quality issues persist in the seed supply chain or farmers are not using complementary inputs or appropriate management techniques when using quality seed. Second, it may be that as certified seed becomes more available to farmers, its use spreads from higher-return farms to lower-return farms, thereby diminishing the gains on the extensive margin. Although more rigorous assessments of causal effects and cost-effectiveness are needed to validate these findings, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that there are diminishing returns to seed quality assurance. Policymakers, regulators, and seed providers may benefit from identifying optimal, crop-specific target quantities or rates for certified seed production rather than aiming for certification of all seed produced in a market