Nigeria’s agric output shows resilience, expands by over N1trn in 9 months

Nigeria’s agricultural output showed resilience in 2014, expanding by over N1 trillion within the first nine months of the year, despite intense unrest in the North East, one of the nation’s agricultural footholds. However, there are now fears that the insurgency which intensified up to early this year is already causing reductions in farm produce supplies, particularly on account of rising factor input prices. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a re- cent report that agriculture contributed N3.034 trillion to real GDP in the opening quarter of 2014, making up 19.65 percent of the quarterly total. As is consistent with the cyclical nature of agricultural production, output increased to N3,360,450.48 or 20.89 percent of the total in quarter two, peaking at 4, 655,322.16 in quarter three, 26.63 percent of Nigeria’s third quarter real GDP. The 5.53 percent growth rate seen in the opening quarter of 2014 is the highest recorded in a long time. But growth slowed in the second quarter by 1.85 percentage points to 3.68 percent before picking up to 4.47 percent in the third quarter. “Despite the unrest in the North Eastern part of the country, agricultural output remained strong in 2014,” the NBS noted in its Economic Review 2014 and 2015 – 2017 Outlook. Nigeria’s agriculture comprises four sub-activities crop production, live-stock, forestry and fishing. The largest activity in the agriculture sector is crop production and also remained the main driver of growth of the agricultural sector, contributing 85.39 percent, 85.91 percent and 90.13 percent to growth in quarters one, two and three of 2014, respectively. But the fastest growing of the sector activities was fishing, which showed growth of 8.40 percent in the opening quarter of 2014, dipping 3.52 percentage points to growth of 4.89 percent and increasing to 6.72 percent growth in quarter three.