What does an avocado really cost? Our new true cost accounting study for Grows in Rows in Nigeria answers that question.

May 26th , 2026

This report was made possible through a collaboration between Grows In Rows (RootNote Initiative) and True Price, supported by the Netherlands Food Partnership True Pricing Seed Fund. The baseline true cost accounting study of smallholder avocado production in Southern Kaduna, Nigeria reveals a striking finding: for every euro received by producers at farm level, approximately nine euros of external costs remain unaccounted for within the transaction. Based on primary data from 150 farmers across three Local Government Areas, the study applies the True Price methodology to quantify hidden social and environmental costs embedded in every kilogram of avocado produced.

The income gap alone accounts for roughly two thirds of the total true price gap (€1.91/kg), reflecting the structural reality that most avocado producing households in the region earn well below established living income benchmarks. Environmental costs, at €0.94/kg, are comparatively modest: production is predominantly rain fed and low input, meaning land occupation is the dominant environmental impact rather than chemical intensity or scarce water use.

Findings were validated through a stakeholder workshop in March 2026, where farmers confirmed the structural picture: avocado as a secondary crop, limited orchard management, fragmented informal marketing, and little access to improved planting material. The study concludes with a phased intervention roadmap, from orchard management training and farmer clustering in the near term, to structured supply networks and regional market integration.

Want to hear more? Check out our interview with Emmanuel Anchaver below.

Access the full report here

See here our interview with Emmanuel Anchaver from Grows in Rows

What does Grows in Rows do and what inspires you in your role?

Grows In Rows works across agribusiness, value chain development, and agricultural systems research, with a strong focus on how agricultural production translates into real economic outcomes.

A lot of our work is around understanding what happens beyond production itself: how crops move through markets, where value is lost, and what prevents agricultural systems from functioning more efficiently and competitively.

What inspires me personally is that agriculture in countries like Nigeria already contains enormous productive potential, but the outcomes often do not reflect that potential. While farmers are producing, markets exist, and demand exists but yet value is still lost across the system through fragmentation, weak coordination, limited processing capacity, and poor market absorption.

That gap between production and value creation is something I find very interesting, because it means many of the solutions are not only agricultural, but structural. Understanding those dynamics, and helping design better systems around them, is a big part of what motivates the work we do.

What are the most exciting research questions in your field right now, and how are you working to explore them?

One of the most interesting questions for me right now is why increased agricultural production in many Nigerian systems still does not consistently translate into stronger incomes or stronger local economies.

In many cases, farmers are already producing. But a large amount of value is lost after production through weak aggregation, limited processing, fragmented markets, post-harvest losses, and poor coordination across the system.

So the question becomes less about production alone, and more about understanding where value is being lost, who captures value within the chain, and which interventions actually change outcomes in a meaningful way.

That is one of the reasons I find True Cost Accounting so interesting. It creates a more structured way to look at agricultural systems beyond yield or output alone. It helps make visible some of the social, environmental, and economic dynamics that are often hidden within conventional market pricing.

Through the work we are doing at Grows In Rows, particularly around emerging value chains like avocado in Southern Kaduna, we are trying to explore these questions through field-level data, stakeholder engagement, and practical system analysis rather than theory alone.

Regarding the recent report on True Cost Accounting of smallholder avocado production in Southern Kaduna, what surprised you most about the results?

What surprised me most was probably how strongly the results reinforced the structural realities we were seeing during fieldwork and validation.

Initially, there is a tendency to assume that environmental impacts or production inefficiencies would dominate the analysis. But the biggest driver of the true price gap was actually under-earning. Most producing households were simply not earning enough to meet basic living income benchmarks.

What made that particularly interesting was that it was closely tied to how avocado functions within the local system. In Southern Kaduna, avocado is still largely treated as a secondary crop. Many trees are scattered, inherited, or intercropped, with limited orchard management and very little dedicated investment.

That affects everything else downstream: harvesting methods, fruit handling, market coordination, and ultimately how much value farmers are able to capture from what they produce.

The validation process was also important because many of these patterns were directly confirmed by farmers and stakeholders themselves. So the findings did not feel abstract or model-driven alone; they reflected realities people within the system already understood intuitively, but had never really quantified in a structured way.

What are some of the biggest limitations or uncertainties you’ve encountered in this research?

One of the biggest limitations was the informal and fragmented nature of the value chain itself.

In many cases, farmers do not keep structured production or financial records, and trade is often done through informal units like baskets or buckets rather than standardized weights. That creates challenges around consistency, measurement, and valuation.

The sector is also still emerging. Avocado in Southern Kaduna is largely a secondary crop rather than a fully commercialized system, so many production and market structures are still evolving. That means some assumptions had to be built carefully through field observations, stakeholder validation, and contextual interpretation rather than relying on large historical datasets.

Another important limitation is that True Cost Accounting frameworks are still developing globally, especially within emerging agricultural systems where markets are informal and data availability is limited. So part of the work was not just applying an existing framework, but understanding how it functions within this kind of context.

At the same time, I think those limitations are also part of what makes the work valuable. They reflect the reality of many agricultural systems across Africa, where important economic and social dynamics exist, but are not yet well measured or structured.

What do you think is the potential of true cost accounting and true pricing for Nigeria?

One of the most interesting questions for me right now is why increased agricultural production in many African systems still does not consistently translate into stronger incomes or stronger local economies.

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