By Ignatius Okorocha
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) has said it has successfully trained and deployed 82, 547 extension workers from 2019 to date to aid and promote local farming in Nigeria.
Extension in agriculture is a service that assists farmers through educational procedures in improving farming methods and techniques as well as increasing production efficiency.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar made the disclosure at an oversight meeting with Senate Committee on Agriculture in Abuja at the weekend.
He said the ministry has also implemented programs on Youth employment in agriculture, youth and women in agric business development.
Abubakar said the training of the extension officers was designed to reduce the ratio of extension services agent to farmers in line with international best practices for increased production of agricultural commodities Nigeria.
According to him,the ministry had also engage in land clearing and development of over 4000 hectares in collaboration with the state and local governments to reduce rural poverty,
He said the ministry was engaging youth in agriculture for increased production of commodities and to achieve accelerated sustainable development of the economy.
He said to support value addition, input delivery and untimately generate employment opportunities, the ministry has constructed several agro-industrial estates,agro-processing centres,farm markets and integrated cooperative service centres.
According to him,over 3 million direct and in direct jobs has be created via the activities of the ministry in the sector.
On self -sufficiency in rice production, ,he said President Muhammadu Buhari approved an intervention fund for completion of 10 large scale rice mills with a combined minimum capacity of 320 Metric Tonns per day in 10 states.
The Minister listed the states to include Jigawa,Kano, Adamawa,Niger,Kaduna,Gombe,Ekiti,Ogun,Bayelsa,and the FCT, adding that the rice mills would make Nigeria close the 7 million Metric Tonns shortfall in domestic rice demand.
He said the ministry successful facilitated 134 million dollars from AFDB to scale up food production and ensure sufficieny in wheat production in Nigeria by 2032
He said the facility was expected to result in cultivation of 250,000 hectares by 250,000 farmers at one farmer per hectare, at an average of three metric tonnes per hactare.
According to him, the measure would result in the production of 750,000 metric tonnes of wheat fromJigawa,Kebbi ,Kano,Bauchi,Kastina,Kaduna,Sokoto,Zamfara ,Gombe,Plateau,Borono,Yobe,Adamawa and Taraba states.
The minister also said the ministry has increased production of fish by 1,364,450 Metric Tonns through artisanal, industrial and marine fishing of the water bodies in the country.
He said the achievements recorded in the sector were evidence of government’s huge investments in the sectors as shown in the consistent significant contributions to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He also attributed improvement in the sector to the synergy amongst the public, private sectors and development partners,adding that the partnership must be sustained to continuously grow agriculture, diversify the economy and empower Nigerians.
He listed indequate budgetary provisions as one of the challenge to execute critical projects and programmes that will stimulate national agricultural production.
He decried that less than 2 per cent of the national budget was been committed to agriculture as against 10 per cent agreed by Africa Heads ofs states at the Malabo declaration, among other challenges.
On IGR,he said the ministry had a revenue target of N271 million , while N307 million has been realised as at July 2022.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture,Sen.Abdulahi Yahaya (PDP-Kebbi) said the success recorded in the release of funds to the ministry was occasioned by the timely passage of the budget by 9th National Assembly before end of every year.
This, he said was resulting in an improvement in the performance of MDAs.
He urged the ministry to ensure full utilisation of the N9 billion released but yet to be uncommitted and the N17 billion that would be released to further ensure execution of projects of the ministry.
Yahaya also told the ministry to make a honest projection on the likely impact of flood, insecurity to food production in the country,and offer advice to government on how to mitigate it.
Yahaya adviced the ministry to come up with a comprehensive program on how best to tackle flood, saying that, National Assembly was committed to support the ministry , if it decides to present a supplementary budget.
