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Consumers hit as prices of cowpea rises 85%


Many homes in Nigeria today are finding it difficult to buy cowpea (beans) as prices of different varieties of the commodity have risen by 85 percent owing to the increase in demand of the crop and decline in production.
According to Novus Agro, a commodity price tracker in the country, a 100kg bag of drum olotu variety of brown beans in mile 12 market sells for N48,000 as against N26,000 sold last year July. While a paint bucket is being sold for N1,600 and a kg is sold for N480.
This shows 85 percent increase in the price of cowpea year-on-year.
“The demand for cowpea is very high now and the supply is lesser,” Lawan Shirama, a cowpea farmer in Bauchi State said in a telephone response to BusinessDay questions.
“Last year there was drought spell and affected production of cowpea because farmers could not harvest their produce in some of the areas. This affected our production and now the price,” Shirama said.
Cowpea which is botanically called vigna unguiculata and locally called beans is an economically important legume and most versatile crop in Nigeria which serves as food to humans and livestock.
Cowpea contains 25 percent protein, several vitamins and minerals and serves as the cheapest means of protein for most Nigerian households, is now fast eluding their reach as prices of the pulses continue to rise.
Nigeria is the largest producer and consumer of cowpea globally, accounting for 61 percent of Africa’s production and 58 percent of global production, according to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).
Available data from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) show that Nigeria’s cowpea production has been on the decline since 2013.
Nigeria produces 2.1 million metric tons of dried cowpea in 2014, latest data available on the FAO website show.
The country has failed to increase its production in recent years owing to the insurgency in the northern parts of the country where the crop is majorly grown as some of the farmers in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa have abandoned farming the crop and flee to places of safety, experts say.
The crop is grown mainly by small-scale farmers in Nigeria and it is majorly grown in Borno, Zamfara, Kano, Sokoto, Kaduna, Gombe and Yobe along other crops as it tolerates shade.
Experts have also attributed the increase in prices to high input cost, as most farmers are unable to farm large farming areas due to high cost of production.
“Prices of farming inputs and cost of production have skyrocketed and this is what is affecting the prices of cowpea.
Inputs alone has gone up by more than 250 percent and the cost of transportation is also very high,” Victor Iyama, president, Federation of Agricultural Commodity Association of Nigeria (FACAN) told BusinessDay.
“Farmers have reduced their farming areas as a result of this,” Iyama added.
Cowpea performs well in a wide variety of soils, and being a legume, it replenishes low fertility soils when the roots are left to decay.