Soil management: stakeholders frown at bush burning

Prof. Victor Chude  Agricultural Extension workers during a two' day sensitisation workshop on soil management

 Agricultural Extension workers from across the country at the recently concluded workshop on soil fertility management and categories for profitability farming in Nigeria has emphasised on the need for proper monitoring against bush burning of farmlands saying the department of forestry needed to put policing measure in place.

Responding to suggestion on bush burning menace in the country, the Registrar/CEO of Nigeria Institute of Soil Science (NISS) Prof. Victor Chude said that the Department of Forestry has the mandate of preventing bush burning inadvertently caused by those hunting for rats, emphasizing that the penalty for offenders must be made stiffer to deter others from such dastardly act against the national food security.

He assured that the NISS is committed to the overall soil development with a view to achieving quality living standard of the people through an improved food production towards effective agricultural transformation and commercialization to create wealth and job to achieving the Federal Government’s dream of better Nigeria.

Said he: ‘’ proper soil and crop management is essential in addressing issues of environmental and more specifically land degradation in Nigeria. It is also important in combating the lingering issue of food insecurity. Food insecurity can only be tackled through effective government policies which must address the issues of land availability, land accessibility and land affordability’’

Mrs. Princess Nwaneke in her paper presentation on the use of SoilDoc system in soil fertility evaluation said that the effective mobilization of the holistic box in all the local governments of the federation would enhance proper management of soil through testing against blanket application of fertilizers pointed out that the need for analysis was very important in the modern day farming and commercialization with premium.

One advantage of the soilDoc app, said Mrs. Nwaneke was its ability to give a result in one day with the involvement of farmers as against the one week expectation from Zaria adding that the box has solved the problem of many states without soil test laboratory.