The Minister of State for Agriculture, Aliyu Sabi, has warned that Nigeria cannot depend solely on rain-fed agricultural practices to achieve sustainable food production.
The Minister made this disclosure stated while speaking on Monday on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme.
He said, “We realized that in the past years, we have not been taking our dry season farming seriously. And we cannot just depend on rain-fed agriculture and be food secure.”
Sabi, however, explained that the Government is addressing these concerns by organizing programmes to boost food production in the country all year round.
“We are currently having in the works a lot of the mechanization programmes. Such as the Greener Hope Mechanization programme and the Greener Imperative Mechanization programme.
He pointed that the Government intends to bring on board more than 2000 tractors in the first instance, and 10,000 subsequently.
“Now, all of these are designed over a period of time to raise the productivity of our farmers by removing the barriers associated with farming,” Sabi said.
Recall that Nigeria is experiencing an unprecedented surge in the prices of major staple food products. This is even as the country is experiencing runaway inflation which has worsened the situation.
Nigerian fragile economic situation deteriorated further over the past year following the removal of petroleum subsidy.
Recall that President Bola Tinubu on assumption of office as President, announced the removal of the fuel subsidy on May 29, 2023.
However, in an effort to curb the rising cost of food, the Government last week, announced massive duty-free food importation of some major food commodities. This, it said was to complement food shortages and force down prices of food stuff in the market.
On Monday the National Bureau of Statistics ( NBS), released Nigeria’s inflation figure. It stated that the figure climbed further to 34.19 per cent in June from 33.94 per cent recorded in May.
In the same vein, the country’s food inflation rate increased to 40.87 per cent in June. Up from 40.66 per cent recorded in May.
As a result of the prevailing situation, the Minister of Agriculture stated that there was a compelling need dry-season farming. He said the country need to take dry-season farming more seriously to ramp up food production.
The Minister also added that the Government was also planning post-harvest intervention at the end of the planting season.
He said, “Agriculture has a time frame. Now, a lot of production is going on. We are in the rainy season, and if you look at the fields, there is a lot of cropping going on. Those crops are not food. They can only translate into food after three months, and depending on the time of it to be harvested.
“It is not all the food we reserve, it is only the cereals that are easy to reserve. And that is why as a Government, the issue of post-harvest is the major issue. And we are looking at programs that can help us intervene in the post-harvest sector.”
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