About 400,000 tonnes of durum, hard red winter and soft red winter wheat varieties valued at N194 billion ($129.2 million) are expected in Nigerian in August 2024.
Of the 400,000 tonnes, six vessels have so far arrived with 134,413 tonnes at Lagos and Calabar port terminals. The cereal was ordered from Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, United States, Argentina and Canada by flour millers, biscuit makers and other consumers.
Findings indicated that there would not be opportunity to import more than 250,000 tonnes under the new zero duty waiver offered by the Federal Government as indicated in the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS)’s guidelines.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its international wheat outlook for August 2024 revealed that the imports as at July 2024 by Nigeria from the wheat producing countries had reached 4.8 million tonnes between January and July 2024, saying that it would further surge by eight per cent to 5.2 million tonnes before the end of August, this year.
In May, the country’s miller took delivery of $34 million worth of hard red winter wheat from the United States. According to the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA)’s shipping data, Spring Lotus arrived with 50,496 tonnes at the Apapa Bulk Terminal Limited (ABTL), Lagos Port as Rostrum secured space at Greenview Development Nigeria Limited (GDNL) to offload 37,736 tonnes.
Also expected at Standard Flour Mill (SFM), Lagos Port are Poseidon Gr with 5,000 tonnes, Nord Nanami, 9,520 tonnes and Yasa Osaka, 15,015 tonnes, while Rostrum with 16,646 tonnes has been moored at Calabar Port.
Meanwhile, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that the country imported N130.26 billion durum wheat from Canada and N98.63 billion from Lithuania in the first quarter of 2024.
Recalled that Federal Government had collaborated with the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Flour Milling Association of Nigeria (FMAN), and the Wheat Farmers Association of Nigeria (WFAN) to achieve a target of 800,000 tonnes in 2024.
Also, satellite mapping and remote sensing study on cultivated acreage and yield estimate had unveiled that around 277,577 hectares were being cultivated, leading to a substantial increase by 139 per cent from 115,909 hectares in 2023.
This study, was focused on wheat cultivation in 15 Northern states and was conducted under the AfDB initiative and the National Agricultural Scheme – AgroPocket (NAGS-AP) programme, indicating an expansion in the cultivated area.
The states include Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara. This year, Jigawa is cultivating 39,904 hectares of wheat as against 18,288 last year, while Niger would cultivate 42,672 hectares as against 1,466 last year.
It was learnt that under a Nigerian Wheat Expansion Project, FMAN had received technical assistance support from IDH, an international social enterprise to develop and implement the wheat supply chain towards increasing production capacity.
The project, spanning three years, aims to empower a total of 25,000 farmers (comprising 5,000 block farmers and 20,000 new smallholder farmers) utilising farms located in four states, namely Jigawa, Kano, Bauchi, and Sokoto states.
It is anticipated that the wheat yield will see a 75 per cent increase from the initial 2.0 to 3.5 metric tonnes. It was revealed that FMAN would off take 99,450 metric tonnes of wheat grain from the project farmers, 54,450 from block farmers and 45,000 from the non-block farmers across the four states. The company is also planning to raise 20,000 tree seedlings to be distributed to the block farmers.