Agriculturalist Urges Govt. to Encourage Irrigation Farming

farm land

An agriculturalist, Mr Stephen Atar has called on the three tiers of government to support extensive irrigation farming to save the country from imminent food shortage.
 
Atar, who is the Managing Director, DA-ALLGREEN SEEDS Ltd, made the call in an interview with newsmen in Kaduna.

He said supporting irrigation farming would go a long way to mitigate the effect of flood and other factors that had affected the nation’s food production.

Atar said that flooding, insecurity and change of government had adversely affected agricultural output in 2015, thereby posing a threat to the nation’s food security.

According to him, only massive dry season farming could cushion the effect of low output in terms of food production being recorded in the country.

“Agriculturists are worried about climate change and how it has affected agricultural production, following flood that occurred in some parts of the country, destroying farm produce this year.

“Also, the current Boko Haram activities that bedeviled the North East region had made that part of the country, virtually agriculturally non- productive, as people could not go to their farms for fear of being killed.
“For the other side of the country that is productive, unfortunately there was flood and the few fields that farmers have been able to plant were flooded,” Atar explained.

The Managing Director of the Kaduna-Based Multifaceted Seeds Company told newsmen that the interface of change of power from the previous administration to the current government also affected agricultural output.

He said the change of government created a vacuum and affected the inputs supply to farmers through the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) introduced by the last administration.
“Farmers could not access the subsidized fertiliser and seeds usually distributed to them around May and June by the government.

“So whatever output that was supposed to be recorded this year, was highly reduced in terms of volume.
“As such, food shortage is imminent in the country due to the aforementioned factors that affected our agricultural production this year,” Atar said.

He, therefore, urged government at all levels to support extensive dry season farming to boost food production in the country.