The federal government through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security has announced the injection of an estimated N309 billion following the administration’s mandate to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmlands across the country.
Abubakar Kyari, the minister of Agriculture and Food Security, gave the information during his briefing at the ongoing 2023 ministerial briefing in Abuja today.
Recall that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, during his New Year message on January 1, 2024, had said “To ensure constant food supply, security and affordability, we will step up our plan to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmlands across the country to grow maize, rice, wheat, millet and other staple crops”
According to the minister “The harvest that we have realized would have an estimated value of about 309 billion nairas injected into the economy in response to the Presidential Directive”
He said “In the last year, in the area of food and nutrition security we launched the dry season farming with cultivation of 118,657 hectares of wheat in 15 states. We launched that all-year round farming in November in Jigawa State which has the largest share of the 118,000 hectares with 40,000 allocated to it”
“I am happy to announce that at the end of the season, Jigawa had produced 55,000 thereby exceeding the allocated 40,000 by 15,000 hectares. We also supported 107,429 wheat farmers with inputs resulting in an output of 474,628 metric tons of wheat that was given, a 50% subsidy of all inputs, fertilizer, agrochemicals as herbicides and insecticides and also seeds, wheat seeds, free of charge
The minister also informed that the administration imported 6,750 tons of wheat from Mexico and covered about 5,500 seeds procured and sourced locally.
Kyari while noting efforts by the administration to tackle the rising cost of food said the ministry also released 42,000 metric tons of assorted food commodities made up of maize, sorghum, millet and gari from the Federal Government of Nigeria Strategic Food Reserve to the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA for onward distribution to parts of the country to vulnerable populations”
“We also procured and distributed to all states of the Federation, including FCT 58,500 metric tons of milled rice to dampen escalating prices. These 58,500 was a deliberate tactic that we did not go to the market to buy but to stimulate the upward prices so what we did was we had the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria and they had 23 different millers that from their own stock without having to go into the market to buy paddy from their own stock in their reserve to mill the 58,500 metric tons of milled rice to produce 950 trailers of rice in addition to our strategy we also fortified crops with vitamin A, micronutrient to enrich nutrition content and health value of food commodities nutrition is an issue now”
The minister further informed that in response to persistent food inflation, the administration Distributed 60,432mt of improved seeds, 887,255mt seedlings, received 2.15 million bags of fertilizer from the Central Bank of Nigeria for distribution to farmers free of charge and Improved farmland security provision of additional resources to Agro Rangers and other security agencies were undertaken to boost production:
Meanwhile fielding questions following the presentation, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the minister of state for Agriculture and Food Security informed that the Tinubu administration is planning to introduce hydroponic and greenhouse farming across all states in Nigeria.
He noted that following the success of the dry season farming in some geopolitical zones, the administration was committed to replicating its success stories across the states investing in produce that are unique to specific regions.
