‘Prices of grains will fall soon’

It is expected that in weeks to come, the prices of grains especially maize will fall following a bumper harvest expected soon as a result of favorable climatic conditions including good rainfall this farming season.
The National Chairman of Grains Storage Practitioners of Nigeria, Eric Ozongwu told Nigerian Tribune that despite the expected crash of price of maize, commodities like sorghum and millet will still maintain its high price.
He said the high price of fertilisers and inadequate storage facilities were a contributory factor to the increment of prices of grains in the market.
He, however, expressed optimism that following the recently commissioned $1.5 billion fertiliser blending plant and the proposed Dangote fertiliser plant, the prices of fertiliser will come down and it will be available to farmers.
According to him, “To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have enough grains in the strategic reserve. The demand of grain is so high because of the limited quantity. Where we are having hope is that probably in the next few months, new grains start flooding the market and that might affect the prices grains. Maize price will come down, but other grains like sorghum, millet might not come down.
“Because of the hunger in the land, many Nigerians want to farm but they still have their constraints of non-availability of fertiliser.
“Government brought in some fertilisers from Morocco and that was seriously not enough compared to the demand of fertiliser and mostly in the northern part of the country, you cannot plant maize and hope to get anything without fertiliser. Rain wasn’t a constraint, the major farm input that is lacking is fertiliser.”
Speaking on post-harvest losses, Ozongwu said, “We still lose enough with regards to post-harvest losses, and preservation of rice is very important. What we are doing now is to see how we can sensitise these farmers on how we can preserve rice and reduce the post-harvest losses in rice because we have rice weevil that eats rice and when you store it for a long time and you don’t fumigate you will lose a lot.
“So it is important we dry them very well to reduce the excesses of post harvest loss so that the moisture content in the rice will be reduced.
“Most of our members have their individual storage facilities and the government said they will concession the silos, but nothing positive has come out of it. We want to key in to some of the silos for the Commodity Exchange, so that some of us can put our grains there.”
He added that, “the United States Department of Agriculture is doing a lot in conjunction with Foreign Agriculture Service and USAID. They have been organising on a yearly basis seminars and workshops on reduction of post-harvest losses; they have been of immense help.”