Without exactly trying to paint a gloomy picture, it shows that Nigeria’s agriculture sector is at best, screwed, if the Federal Government really does have a N16 billion import bill on Tomatoes every year.

Maybe it’s not a completely hopeless situation, as it’s definitely redeemable, but one has to wonder- how did we get here?

According to the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sonny Echono: “Development and application of post-harvest handling model for horticural Crops” in Abuja, added that 750, 000 tonnes of tomatoes is lost to post-harvest.

“Horticultural crops, because of their delicate nature face tremendous post-harvest challenges. In Nigeria, specifically, tomatoes has the highest priorities with domestic demand of 2.3 million tonnes of fresh production annually, national production of 1.8 million tonnes, waste of over 750, 000 tonnes and an import bill of N16 billion to make up for shortfall in local production.”

In a nation blessed with arable and fertile land across several regions, spending that much on a crop we can comfortably produce, is just sad.

And this makes us what?

Screwed.