By Stella Odueme
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security is to hold a one day round table on tomatoes in Nigeria to enhance productivity and food security as well as to reduce post-harvest losses.
This was made known during a courtesy visit led by the National President, National Tomato Grower’s Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria, NATPAN, to the Minister’s office in Abuja.
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, stated that the one day round table on tomato policy was intended to, among other things, evaluate, expound national tomato policy, make the proposal for revision and passing to Mr. President who, according to the Minister of State, is more than willing to ensure that no Nigerian goes to bed hungry.
“let us not allow the issue of tomato to be used by some to turn us to hungry people, the round table has to happen quickly because the dry season is just around the corner and what happens during the dry season doesn’t just stay with the dry season, rather it gets carried far and beyond into the lean period”.
Speaking further, he pointed out that Nigeria has about 73 million hectares of arable land, “which currently we are dealing with only about 41 to 43 million, which means we are having close to half of our arable land not being farmed”, the Minister added.
Sen. Abdullahi, therefore, commended the Association for the visit, pointing out that their coming was apt, timely, and productive.
Earlier this year, Nigerians witnessed high prices of tomatoes on account of scarcity and some other issues.
In his remarks, the National President, National Tomato Grower’s Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria (NATPAN), Abdullahi Ringim, stated that the purpose of their visit was to draw the attention of the Ministry to the non-implementation of the tomato policy to addressing grey areas in the policy and other related matters.
He pointed out that non-enforcement of the policy on tomato levy has rendered comatose the envisaged availability of the requisite fund for the development of the tomato sector, noting that one of the major inflationary cost of fresh tomato beside seasonality is the effect of pest, increase cost of transportation amongst others.
The national president also recalled that on the 8th February, 2017, the Federal Executive Council, FEC, at its meeting, considered and approved measures to attract investments and protect local tomato processes.
He revealed that the approved measures were ban on the importation of Tomato paste, power or concentrate put up to retail sale, increase in the tariff on tomato concentrate, restriction on the importation of Tomato concentrate to the seaport to address abuse of the ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme.
Others were classification of greenhouse equipment as agricultural equipment in order to attract import duty, inclusion of tomato production, and processing in the list of industries eligible for investment incentive.
The National President, also highlighted the economic potentials of the tomato sub-sector to the Nigerian economy to include; full implementation of the tomato policy to protect local investors, granting of fertilizer blending license and subsidizing other inputs, promotion of partnership with international players for generic breading of high breed seeds amongst others.
Stakeholders to be involved in the one day round table include; The Association, Federal Department of Agriculture, Extension Services Department, National Agricultural Development Fund, all Zonal and Coordinating Institutes as well as all Universities of Agriculture.
