Ahead of the 2025 farming season, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS) has called for a one-day round table on tomatoes in Nigeria to enhance productivity and food security as well as to reduce post-harvest losses.
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Aliyu Abdullahi, stated that the one-day round table on tomato policy was intended to evaluate and proffer solution to the national tomato policy. Abdullahi made the call during a courtesy visit led by the President of the National Tomato Grower’s, Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria, (NATPAN) in Abuja.
Recall that the prices of fresh tomatoes in Nigeria saw a drastic spike of over 100 percent, with some states of the federation trading a basket of the product at a minimum price of N150,000.
In addressing the crop pandemic ahead of the 2025 farming /harvest season, Abdullahi said, “Let us not allow the issue of tomato to be used by some to turn us into hungry people.
“The round table has to happen quickly because the dry season is just around the corner and what happens during the dry season doesn’t just stay with the dry season, rather it gets carried far and beyond into the lean period”.
In his remarks, the National President, of NATPAN, Abdullahi Ringim, stated that the purpose of their visit was to draw the attention of the Ministry to the non-implementation of the tomato policy to address grey areas in the policy and other related matters.
He pointed out that non-enforcement of the policy on tomato levy has rendered comatose the envisaged availability of the requisite funds for the development of the tomato sector.
He said, “One of the major inflationary costs of fresh tomato besides seasonality is the effect of pest, increased cost of transportation amongst others”. Ringim noted that on February 8, 2017, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) met and approved steps to attract investments and protect local tomato processors.
The measures he said were to include the “Ban on the importation of Tomato paste; Power or concentrate put up to retail sale; Increase in the tariff on tomato concentrate; Restriction on the importation of Tomato concentrate to the seaport to address abuse of the ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme”.
Others, he said, were the classification of greenhouse equipment as agricultural equipment to attract import duty, and the inclusion of tomato production, and processing in the list of industries eligiblefor investment incentives.
