ARCN boss decries CBN loans to untrained farmers

* Laments over insecurity

The Executive Secretary (ES) of the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), Professor Garba Sharubutu has condemned and described Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s loans to untrained farmers as sheer waste of economic resources, just as he complained on the state of insecurity on food productivity.

This was disclosed by the ARCN ES, Prof. Sharubutu during an interview session with the Agricultural Correspondents Association of Nigeria (ACAN) scorecard platform last week Tuesday.

The ARCN boss said it was dishearten to see Government giving out money to untrained farmers under the Anchor Borrowers Programme of the CBN instead of engaging trained farmers and graduates of Agriculture who would have wisely managed the fund with best agricultural practices.

He revealed that his council has written a proposal to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Sabo Mohammadu Nanono on the need for the creation of enterprise centres in all the Federal Colleges of Agriculture in the country that would provide internship platform for agriculture students for better understanding of agriculture as business.

Sharubutu also suggested that agricultural graduates and trained farmers should be supported with many of the research innovations laying fallow in many research institutes, stressed doing this would ensure moving out these technologies from the shelve to people with better understanding of the purpose of improved technologies.

                        

Commenting on the continuous conflicts between herders and farmers, ES ARCN said that the fight between the two parties has affected deployment of new technologies and innovations to farmers as he thereby called for the deployment of forest guards across the country to checkmate the heinous activities of bandits, kidnappers and Boko Haram insurgents from all their hideouts like is done in Kenya and India.