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For the first time in nearly two years, shoppers in Makurdi and other major towns across Benue State are walking away from the market with smiles and lighter bills.
A sudden and dramatic drop in the price of staple foods, especially grains and tubers, has brought long-awaited relief to households that have been stretched to breaking point by inflation.
During a market survey on Sunday, traders in Wurukum, Wadata, and North Bank markets confirmed that a bag of maize that sold for ₦82,000 two months ago is now going for between ₦38,000 and ₦42,000. A 100-kg bag of new yam that hovered around ₦120,000–₦140,000 at the peak of scarcity has fallen to ₦65,000–₦75,000. Beans, sorghum, and rice have followed the same downward trend, with some varieties dropping by as much as 45 percent.
The reason is simple: the 2025 harvest has arrived in full force.
Benue, long celebrated as the Food Basket of the Nation, is finally living up to its name again. Early-maturing varieties of yam, maize, and guinea corn are flooding the markets from farms in Gwer West, Guma, Logo, Katsina-Ala, and Agatu. Farmers who managed to plant despite insecurity and high input costs are now reaping bountiful yields, and the supply has simply overwhelmed demand.
For consumers, it feels like a miracle. “I bought a big basket of yam for ₦6,500 yesterday,” a civil servant in High Level told this blog. “Last month the same basket was ₦18,000. My children will eat yam three times this week and still have plenty left.”
But while buyers celebrate, the mood among traders and farmers who stocked up at the height of the scarcity is grim.
Many middlemen and store owners who borrowed money to buy grains at ₦80,000+ per bag are now forced to sell at half the price just to clear space for the new harvest. Some are counting losses running into millions of naira. Farmers who held back part of last year’s produce in the hope of even higher prices are watching their investment rot or sell for peanuts.
“It is painful,” admitted a major yam dealer at the Wadata market. “We suffered to keep the state fed when there was nothing. Now that plenty has come, nobody remembers that sacrifice.”
Economists say this classic boom-and-bust cycle is almost inevitable in an agrarian economy with little storage infrastructure and no effective price-stabilisation mechanism. Until government or private investors build modern silos and create commodity boards that can buy and store excess harvest, the same circle of artificial scarcity followed by painful crashes will continue.
For now, though, most families in Benue are too busy enjoying full pots and stretched salaries to worry about next year.
Markets are buzzing again, soup smells stronger in homes, and for the first time in a long while, the phrase “Food Basket of the Nation” is being spoken with pride rather than irony.
The harvest has come. Let the eating begin.
