World Food Day: Stakeholders Rally Nigerians To Eat Local Rice For Food Security

Nigerian rice farmers, millers, and development partners, on Thursday, called on citizens to embrace locally produced rice as a national effort to strengthen food security, create jobs and revive the agricultural economy.

Speaking in Abuja at event to mark the 2025 World Food Day, the National Chairman of the Competitive African Rice Forum for Sustainable Development, Peter Dama, urged Nigerians to prioritise homegrown rice over imported brands, saying the quality of local production has improved significantly over the years.

He said the campaign to “Eat Nigerian Rice” it is a collective commitment to national resilience and economic independence.
Dama explained that Nigerian rice has reached a competitive standard, with small and large mills across the country now equipped with advanced processing machines, including destoners, polishers, and colour sorters.

He said the days when local rice was known for impurities are gone, noting that the industry has evolved with better technology and improved hygiene standards.

However, he warned that the industry continues to face serious challenges that threaten its progress.

Among the pressing issues are high production costs, the rising price of fertilizer, lack of irrigation systems, and insecurity in farming communities.

He added that import duty waivers on foreign rice have weakened local competitiveness, leaving many farmers unable to recover their investments or sustain production.

He said, “Our advocacy is simple, we are calling on Nigerians to eat what we produce. Nigerian rice is healthy, it creates jobs, and it strengthens our national food security. The era when local rice was known for impurities is gone. Today, our mills are equipped with polishers, destoners, and colour sorters that meet international standards.

“We have been appealing to government to reduce the cost of fertilizer, support irrigation, and stop the import duty waivers that make foreign rice cheaper than ours,” he said. “Farmers have produced and the rice is there, but they cannot sell because production costs are too high. The price of fertilizer alone is now between 65,000 and 75,000 naira. No farmer can survive under such conditions.”

“In the past, young Nigerians earned a living through rice farming,” Dama added. “They paid school fees, built homes, and supported their families from it. But today, insecurity, high costs, and climate challenges have pushed production down to about seven or eight million metric tonnes. We are determined to rebuild that capacity, and we are asking Nigerians to stand with us by eating Nigerian rice.”

He urged the federal and state governments to support the local rice value chain by providing affordable credit facilities, subsidized fertilizers, and functional irrigation infrastructure.

He said access to low-interest loans would help farmers cope with the current 27.5 per cent commercial lending rate, which has made agricultural investment unsustainable.

The “Eat Nigerian Rice” campaign, formally launched in Abuja on Wednesday is a Market-Oriented Value Chains for Jobs and Growth in the ECOWAS Region (MOVE), a project commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), co-financed by the Gates Foundation and the European Union (EU), and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH,

The campaign seeks to promote Nigerian rice as a symbol of national pride and a key driver of rural employment.

According to organisers, the movement is designed to help Nigeria achieve sustainable food production by strengthening value chains, improving farmer incomes, and encouraging consumers to make conscious choices that support local producers.

Stakeholders at the Abuja event agreed that Nigeria’s rice industry embodies the spirit of this year’s theme. By choosing local rice, they said, Nigerians can help secure jobs, protect the environment, and strengthen the economy from within.

The “Eat Nigerian Rice” campaign, they added, is not a seasonal campaign but a long-term vision, to make local rice a national preference and a global standard for quality and sustainability.