Considering the observed yearly loss of over $8.9bn to agricultural post-harvest losses as a result of poor and unsecured haulage system, the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), has come up with the Secured Agricultural Commodity Transport Corridor (SAT-C) as panacea.
Explaining how it works recently in Abuja, NIRSAL managing director, Aliyu Abdulhameed who hosted private and public sector stakeholders to a technical session on the workings of SAT-C, said its innovative system will fix key challenges facing the transportation of agricultural produce and products across the country.
He noted that NIRSAL’s objective for developing and proposing the SAT-C model, is to address the bottlenecks in the movement of agric produce and consequently reduce wastages resulting from late evacuation of particularly perishable produce from the farms.
According to him, “The implementation of SAT-C is envisaged to reduce the prices of food commodities, enhance food security and increase the contribution of the Agriculture Sector to Nigeria’s GDP”.
Industry analysts say two of the major challenges facing investors in farming remain haulage crisis due to bad roads and preservation facilities both along the major transit towns and market cities.
Checks across major foodstuff markets in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Onitsha, Port Harcourt and others showed that high level spoliation ratio is discouraging investments in farming especially in agrarian states.
