The document analyzes Nigeria's 2013 agricultural sector budget. It finds that the budget allocated only 1.7% of total spending to agriculture, continuing a downward trend. It notes various challenges facing the sector like low productivity and access to inputs. The analysis finds that funding for critical areas like extension services, credit access, and research are inadequate. It recommends increasing spending to 10% of the budget as agreed, and improving targeting of programs and credit to better support smallholder farmers, especially women.

1. Analysis of 2013 Agricultural
Sector Budget
By Esther Agbon & Constance Okeke

2. Background
• Agriculture spending is critical to reducing
poverty and promoting development in Nigeria
• Small holder farmers (2ha) produce over 90% of
the Nations food
• Agriculture employs about 70% of the
population
• Successive governments have failed to prioritize
agriculture

3. Background
• Agriculture is the largest contributor to GDP –
over 40%
• Real GDP growth in terms of output is 3.7% as
compared to 5.95% in 2011, (NBS,Q2, 2012)

4. Major Challenges
• Low access to extension services, credit and
input
• Standard is 1:500 extension worker farmer ratio
• In Nigeria extension worker to farmer ratio is
1:1,500 households
• Low access to land - 38% of farm household
own no land, about 25% own 1ha or less

5. Challenges
• Only about 40,000 ha are irrigated which is
less than 1% of land actually in use
• Crop yields are far below their potentials
despite available arable land
• In Nigeria a ha yields only 4 tonnes compared
to other countries with 13 -14 tonnes/ha of
agricultural products
• Loss of farm lands, produce, livelihoods due to
climate change

6. Women in Agriculture
• Small holder farmers face even greater
challenges
• Form 60 – 80% of the labour force
• Carry out 50% of husbandry and 60% of food
processing
• They produce both food and cash crops and
perform multiple roles on and off farm
• Work on their own plots as well as others as
unpaid or paid labourers

7. Government Policies
• policies and plans to increase productivity
include; Agriculture transformation agenda,
CAADP, MDG 1, vision 20:2020
• Federal and state level programs on fertilizer
research, credit loans etc
• Despite these, budgetary allocations and
actual spending on agric key services are
grossly inadequate to reduce poverty

8. Focus of analysis
• Government spending on key areas such as
- Women farmers
- Input (seeds, fertilizer, chemicals etc)
- Extension services
- Credit
- Research and development

9. Funding Trend
• Funding for agriculture has been on the
downward trend since 2009
Agric funding trend
6.2
3.6
1.9 1.7
1.66
% % % % %
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

10. Findings
• Total Agric budget 1.7% of 4.920t amounting to
N81,410b
Total Agric budget Main Ministry
Recurrent
15%
Other DAs
42%
Main Min
58% Capital
85%

11. General Observations
• The budget lines especially for the main ministry are
very ambiguous – lacks details
• Most of the budget items do not contain intervention
locations as with some of the DAs
• Climate change gets N60m – lacks proper description
Is it for adaptation? Mitigation? or ………….
• Repetition of items such as seeds and fertilizer with
no description on location, specification, quantity
poses challenges for monitoring

12. Provision for Women
• No clear budget line for women farmers except for
training of 3000 women in value chain worth N100
million
• Amounts to N33,000 per head including other costs
• Starter packs for 2500 women worth 87.5 million
• Compared to the number of women in the sector
the amount and target is insignificant
• Contradicts the policy thrust which presume focus
on women

13. Farm Input and Extension Services
• Fertilizer, seeds, fungicides repeated severally
with different budget costs
• extension service gets N12m for capacity
building – how many people how many days?
• while a feasibility study for a meat processing
and packaging gets N200m
• Farmer field schools get paltry N53m
• The quality of allocations are not people driven

14. Credit
• Provisions for access to credit is funded by the
ongoing MDG1 projects
- Access to credit - N250,000,000
- Access to credit – N900,000,000
• Question is who, where and how many people
will benefit from this loan?

15. Research and Development
• The agencies and departments in agric ministry
are mainly research institutes
• Only 42% of the total budget will be shared
among them
• Main ministry spends N100,000,000 for R&D
• Question is why are the research Institutes so
poorly funded?
• Obvious the institutes will not fare well in 2013

16. Research and Development
Capital vs recurrent
3,000,000,000
2,500,000,000
2,000,000,000
1,500,000,000
Recurrent
1,000,000,000 Capital
Total
500,000,000
0
1. National Centre for 2. Agric Research & 3. National Root Crops 4. Natioanl Institute for 5. Institute of Agriculture
Agric Mechanisation - Management Institute - Research Institute - Oil Palm Research Research - Zaria
Ilorin Ilorin Umudike (NIFOR) Benin

17. Bloated/Wasteful Overheads
• Office construction for the main ministry was
duplicated severally with different costs.
• Construction/provision of office building – N1.6m
• Fencing and engineering design of Hqtrs –N620m
• Remodelling of the same Hqtrs – N100m
• Processing zones repeated
6 times @N200m each, lacks
description and location

18. Recommendations
• Federal Government and states should
progressively fund agric to reach the 10%
Maputo agreement
• The allocations must be qualitative and people
centred
• Increase massively, spending on extension
services – recruitment & training, credit and
inputs
• Sincerely prioritize credit and input for women
farmers in the budget

19. Recommendations
• Refocus the fertilizer subsidy programme and agric
research services to adequately target women
considering their role in the sector
• Make agric budgets more descriptive and clear to aid
monitoring
• Ensure participation of farmers, CSO and other
stakeholders in annual budget process to aid design of
agric programmes and projects

20. Thank you for Listening