There is no indication that serious effort towards
increasing rice productivity in Nigeria to checkmate importation is being put
in place even at the closure of land borders by the Federal Government (FG).
Food Farm News has gathered.
Finding revealed that since the partial closure of land
borders by the FG about six months ago, little or no much effort seem to have
been put in place as serious commitment to rice acceleration productivity apart
from the Anchor Borrower Programme
(ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which 2018-19 report by the National Agricultural
Extension and Research Liaison Services ( NAERLS) revealed as having very few
beneficiaries with Bauchi, the highest state recording a little higher than
10,000 farmers while less than 2,000 came from Lagos state. And next to Bauchi
state is Adamawa with close to 5,000 farmers.
Food Farm News gathered from 2017
NAERLS report that a total output of 8.02 million metric tons of rice
production was recorded which translates to 14.7% increase over 2016 production
with land cultivation upscale at 6.9% on an estimated 3.390.3 million hectare
that gave 2.4 ton per hectare.
However the increase in land cultivation may
have been attributed to the FG’s initiative on checkmating large importation of
rice through promotion of intensive production, but unfortunately this tempo
has not been maintained to ensure productivity sustainability according to
2018-2019 report which described rice output as not being increased
considerably in all the states of the federation.
The chart report for 2018-2019
showed a down ward annual production performance as Niger state happened to be
the highest with the annual 600 metric tons, while Akwa Ibom had the least
figure of almost zero production in rice. It was generally believed that
cultivated land and production output did not considerably increase unlike year
2017 that recorded 8.2 metric tons.
Observers believe that the
Government’s non total commitment to rice acceleration may not take us any
where far from import, stressed that only unrelenting effort in terms of support
and friendly agricultural policies will help to checkmate rice importation from
the present shortfall.
The observers who all wanted anonymity
pondered on the 2020 lean budget of 1.3%
as against 1.5% of 2019, queried that the allocation for the sector in the new year has
contravened the 10% of the total national
budget allocation to Agriculture as being stipulated by the Comprehensive
Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) for the African countries.
They said that year 2020 budget of 138 billion naira for Agriculture
was also a strong indication of FG unserious attitude to checkmate food import
especially rice that smugglers are ready to do everything to flood the markets
saying that enough fund should be made available to increase production with
improved inputs along with processing and marketing.
One of them said that ‘’ the policy
on rice production has a lot of gaps; CBN is not well positioned to anchor
agricultural program. Bank of Agriculture (BOA) is better positioned; the Rice
Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) needs to identify genuine farmers who
are the input beneficiaries.
Inputs distribution should come in good time like
April to farmers. There should also be monetary attachment to support land
preparation and labour to discourage sales and diversion of inputs to raise
money ’’
Effort to get the side of the Government
from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) on
preparedness to ensure sustainable increased rice production round the year has
not yielded any response till the point of this report after over two months of
request.
Although some of the officials in
the ministry who spoke under anonymous said no activity is ongoing in any of
the crop value chains including rice due to lack of fund, but hope the new year
would usher in a better implementation strategies as many major projects have been stopped due
to funding challenges.
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