Sesame seeds price crazy to high demand, scarcity, says the National President

The National President, Sesame Seed Association of Nigeria, Alhaji Sheriff Balogun has described the present high demand for the produce as too crazy due to scarcity as farmers could not cultivate because of insecurity in the country.

Alhaji Sheriff expressed this concern last week in his office with Food Farm News while responding to the present position of the produce across the globe.

Sheriff posited that insecurity through the activities of bandits and kidnappers must be properly put to check so that farmers can have the confidence of going to cultivate more sesame to mitigate the shortfall that is making prices to go higher with increasing demand across the globe.

According to him ‘’ the present demand for sesame seed is crazy across the globe with Nigeria low production due to insecurity occasioned by bandit and kidnappers activities that is making farmers to refrain from going to farms to cultivate more above the 500.000 metric tons . This is part of great challenges that have caused the scarcity and hence the high prices’’

Balogun had said in his Kano speech during the international conference on sesame  that globally, over 4.8 million tons of sesame seeds are produced annually with data from NBS showing export of the crop in 2020 at N49 billion to Japan, Turkey and Europe, added that Nigeria is largest producer in Africa and third largest in the world with 580,000 tons produced in 2017.