According to Aliyu Sabi, the Minister of State for Agriculture, the nation cannot attain sustainable food production by relying just on rain-fed agricultural systems. This was said by the minister during a Monday speech on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily show.
“We realised 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,” the minister said.
The minister clarified that initiatives to increase the nation’s year-round food production are one way the government is addressing these worries.
We are currently having in the works a lot of the mechanisation programmes, such as the greener hope mechanisation programme, the greener imperative mechanisation programme, “the minister said, adding 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,” Mr Aliyu said.
Recently, as inflation has increased and the effects of climate change have gotten worse, Nigeria has seen an unprecedented spike in the cost of important fundamental food items.
After President Bola Tinubu eliminated the fuel subsidy upon taking office in May of last year, the situation has gotten worse over the course of the past year.
The government said last week that it would be importing large amounts of some important food items duty-free in order to offset shortages and drive down market prices due to the rising cost of food.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) issued the most recent inflation data on Monday, showing that Nigeria’s inflation rate increased to 34.19 percent in June from 33.94 percent in.
Food inflation in the nation rose from 40.66 percent in May to 40.87 percent in June. In order to increase food production, the circumstances has made it necessary to give dry-season farming more serious consideration.
Mr. Sabi stated on Monday that after the conclusion of the planting season, the government was also preparing a post-harvest intervention.
“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.”
