On 16 October, Nigeria marks World Food Day versus an uneasy background of numbers. The current Cadre Harmonisé analysis, performed by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security with the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme, tasks that 34.7 million Nigerians will deal with severe food insecurity in between June and August 2026, up from 27.2 million today.
Nigeria ranks 115th out of 123 nations on this year’s Global Hunger Index, a”majorappetite score. These are not the varieties of a nation except land, labour, or aspiration. We have actually never ever done not have farming capacity. From fertile farmlands and varied agro-ecological zones to substantial animals belts and dynamic fisheries, our natural endowment and human capital can sustaining a flourishing country.
In spite of this abundance, countless Nigerians deal with serious obstacles in accessing enough, healthy, and economical food. As the worldwide neighborhood contacts us to innovate today so we can nurture tomorrow, this contradiction must force us to look previous raw harvest forecasts and challenge a more basic functional truth: can we construct an integrated food system that dependably gets what we produce from the farm gate to the household table?
From where I rest on the factory flooring as a maker, food security does not start or end with farming. It depends completely on the strength and performance of the wider commercial worth chain. A farmer requires accredited and shown inputs, useful funding, modern-day innovation, and foreseeable offtake and prices. A food producer requires a stable supply of top-quality basic materials at the scale, consistency, and rates needed to keep assembly line running. Customers, at the end of the line, need safe, nutrient-dense items that do not break family budget plans. Along these points lie crucial functional dependences: post-harvest aggregation, freezer, commercial processing, main transport, steady energy, and cold-chain circulation. Every link matters; when one stops working, the whole system fractures.
Think about the untapped chances and preventable losses in our fruit-producing passages. Nigeria cultivates a remarkable range of fruits, yet we lose an approximated 35 to 40 million tonnes of food each year, worth more than 3.5 trillion, much of it before it ever reaches customers. Perishables such as vegetables and fruits bring the greatest loss rates, typically 40 to 50%, driven by the lack of cold-chain logistics, rural storage, and fast processing facilities. Fruits are naturally disposable. Without effective rural aggregation centres and temperature-controlled transportation, harvest excess rapidly develop into devastating post-harvest waste. Nigeria’s own agribusiness sector currently reveals what is possible: in Kaduna State, Tomato Jos has actually developed an outgrower and processing design around approximately 500 smallholder tomato farmers, and a fresh $2.5 million financial investment from the EU’s farming funding center this September will assist it scale to 1,500 farmers, almost quadruple fresh-tomato throughput by 2029, and lift farmer earnings by more than 150% over the very same duration. This is not a theoretical repair; we are constructing it today in Northern Nigeria, and we require to reproduce this or comparable designs throughout city government locations and states in Nigeria for numerous crops, beginning with the most affected. Developing an industrialised fruit- and vegetable-processing environment modifications this formula totally: it stabilises farmers’ earnings, cushions seasonal market shocks, and transforms disposable harvests into shelf-stable, value-added items that nurture customers throughout the year.
The very same functional vibrant governs our animals and dairy community. Nigeria has among the biggest animals herds in sub-Saharan Africa, yet increasing our self-sufficiency in dairy and protein can not be accomplished just by having more livestock on open grazing paths. It requires a synchronised, industrial facilities: accredited feed and fodder products, methodical veterinary care, hygienic milking stations, rural milk collection centres, and undisturbed cold-chain logistics running straight from pastoral neighborhoods to processing plants. Worldwide, India’s Amul, a farmer-owned cooperative established in 1946, uses the design template: it arranged countless fragmented smallholders into village-level collection and freezer centers, centres feeding main processing plants, which network today represents 3.6 million farmers and turns over more than US$ 12 billion a year, making it the world’s biggest dairy cooperative. Morocco’s COPAG, a cooperative established in Taroudant in 1987 and owned and run by its farmer-members, demonstrates how far this design can go: it ended up being a self-dependent FMCG organization that processes and offers what its members grow, led by the Jaouda dairy brand name, and reported about 8.1 billion dirhams in income in 2025, near US$ 900 million. Nigeria does not require to develop this design; it requires the commercial will to develop it at this scale locally. Without these physical and logistical links, the space in between domestic animals rearing and budget-friendly, in your area packaged dairy items stays needlessly broad.
This is why farming and production can no longer run in administrative or industrial silos; They are commercial partners. Food producers offer foreseeable, high-volume off-take for farming manufacturers; in turn, disciplined farming supply chains offer the raw products required to broaden regional commercial capability and replacement pricey imports. When this relationship grows, financial worth is produced at every node, farmers get consistent incomes, commercial processing produces competent work, transportation operators run feasible paths, Nigerian households get to wholesome food, and federal governments get taxes to offer social items.
Regional sourcing can not stay a business motto or an aspirational target; it should make cold industrial sense for everybody included. For a producer, domestic basic materials need to fulfill rigorous functional requirements of volume, security, health, and expense effectiveness. For smallholder farmers and industrial growers, satisfying those requirements needs multi-year supply agreements, technical extension assistance, devoted farming funding, and rural feeder roadways. Bridging this functional divide needs collaborated, long-lasting collaborations linking makers, business banks, advancement organizations, farming research study bodies, and farming clusters.
Through all of this, ease of access should stay the specifying criteria of success. Food security can not merely indicate that food is physically present in the market; it needs to indicate that healthy food is reasonably cost effective to common working homes. Food inflation has actually run near, and sometimes above, 20% for the majority of 2026, relieving just a little to 19.57% in August. Production tariffs, unpredictable energy expenses, haulage traffic jams, financing charges, and product packaging inputs all collect straight onto the last list price. Resolving the price puzzle for that reason needs resolving systemic functional friction along the line, instead of counting on short-term food circulation interventions.
As a Nigerian food and drink business, C.H.I. Limited runs at the heart of this interconnected landscape. Our everyday operations throughout fundamental classifications, from fruit drinks to dairy, regularly reveal that the future of Nigeria’s food security is not chosen exclusively by what occurs within the walls of our factories. It is formed by what takes place upstream long before basic materials reach our factory gates, and downstream after packaged items leave our packing docks.
On this World Food Day, it is time to move past the rhetoric of capacity. Development can not be determined simply by overall hectares cleared or small tonnes collected. The real procedure of food sovereignty depends on just how much of that harvest is processed locally, just how much waste is crafted out of the worth chain, how effectively items relocate to customer plates, just how much of the staying is exported, and the number of practical incomes are integrated in the procedure.
Nigeria has the land, the farmers, the animals, and a huge customer base. We have the commercial capability to process what we grow. The immediate job is linking these parts into an effective, durable supply network. A country can not consume prospective. We need to do the useful work of turning possible into production, production into genuine worth, which worth into food that dependably nurtures our individuals.
- Oluyemi is the Executive Director, Operations of Chivita Hollandia International (C.H.I. Limited). He is an experienced service and individuals leader with comprehensive experience in driving sustainable development, functional quality, and high-performing, cross-functional groups. Prior to signing up with C.H.I. Limited, he functioned as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of UAC Foods Limited and held senior management positions at Kerry Taste & & Nutrition, Kellogg and Procter & & Gamble, where he provided strong functional and business outcomes. He is acknowledged for his collective management design, development state of mind, strength, diligence and dedication to quality and stability.
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