Nigeria can’t depend on rainy-season farming to achieve food security — Minister

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Aliyu Sabi, has said the country cannot depend solely on rain-fed agricultural practices to achieve sustainable food production.

The minister said this while speaking on Monday on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme.

“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 explained that the government is addressing these concerns by organising programmes to boost food production in the country all year round.

“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, Nigeria has experienced an unprecedented surge in the prices of major staple food products amidst rising inflation and worsening climate change effects.

The situation deteriorated further over the past year following President Bola Tinubu’s removal of the fuel subsidy upon assuming office last May.

The rising cost of food prompted the government last week to announce massive duty-free food importation of some major food commodities to complement food shortages and force down prices in the market.

According to the latest inflation figures released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics ( NBS), Nigeria’s inflation figure climbed further to 34.19 per cent in June from 33.94 per cent recorded in May.

The country’s food inflation increased to 40.87 per cent in June from 40.66 per cent recorded in May.

The situation has compelled the need to take dry-season farming more seriously to ramp up food production.

Post-harvest intervention

On Monday, Mr Sabi said the government was also planning post-harvest intervention at the end of the planting season.

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“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.”