Nigeria Loses Half Its Harvest to System Failures While GMO Push Ignores the Real Crisis and Forces a False Solution

Nigeria loses up to 50 per cent of its agricultural produce after harvest, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. The revelation, made by Ibrahim Ishaka, a Food Systems and Nutrition Specialist, exposes a deeply rooted structural failure in Nigeria’s agricultural value chain, one that contradicts the dominant narrative suggesting low yields are the country’s biggest farming problem.

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Ishaka explained that the losses occur not on the farm, but after crops have already been successfully grown and harvested. Poor infrastructure, a lack of storage facilities, inefficient harvesting techniques, pest infestations during storage, and limited access to markets are among the primary reasons that half of Nigeria’s food output never reaches consumers.

This perspective undermines the crisis framing often used to justify the aggressive rollout of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Proponents of GMOs frequently argue that new seed technologies are essential to overcoming low farm productivity in Nigeria and across Africa. However, the FAO’s data tells a different story:

Farmers are already producing large quantities of food, but the country is failing to preserve, process, and distribute it efficiently.

Many question whether the focus on GMOs is a case of treating the wrong problem, or a case of turning Nigeria into a testing ground for biotech products.

If half of everything we grow ends up wasted, then no seed, genetically modified or not, will fix the core issue. The real crisis is not the productivity of our soil. It’s the absence of infrastructure and market access.

With nearly 50% of agricultural output wasted, Nigeria loses billions in potential income and food that could feed millions. There is an urgent need for:

• Cold storage and silos
• Farm-to-market roads
• Processing hubs
• Farmer education on post-harvest handling
• Investments in cooperative logistics and warehousing

Yet these needs are rarely the focus of high-profile donor funding.

Instead, large sums from foreign philanthropic organisations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are directed toward biotech seed research, GMO promotion, and public-private partnerships with seed multinationals, all under the premise that Africa’s farms are failing to produce enough.

The situation highlights a dangerous misalignment in funding priorities. The big money is going into seed genetics and GMO policy lobbying, but not into the systems that would reduce food insecurity. It’s hard to justify flooding the market with new seed technologies when farmers are still losing half their harvests due to systemic neglect.

The FAO’s findings are a sobering reminder that increasing yields through technological inputs will not guarantee food security if the post-harvest system remains broken. The focus must shift toward fixing storage, transportation, and processing, not just reengineering the seed.

The FAO’s warning reframes the urgent question in Nigerian agriculture:

Do we need to grow more, or waste less?

Suppose the solution to Nigeria’s food crisis is being written in global boardrooms. In that case, it must first start with understanding the real crisis, and that crisis isn’t low productivity. It’s a broken system that lets half the food rot before it reaches a plate.

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