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I am delighted to welcome stakeholders to the 44th National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development, a platform for appraising existing policies, programmes and projects at the National and sub-national levels for the purpose of entrenching synergy, best practices, entrepreneurship, livelihood and growth in the sector.
2. The challenges brought by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, floods and insecurity have galvanized the government into setting up necessary structures (and upgrade existing ones) to address infrastructural deficiency, technology gaps, security challenges and extension inadequacy. This approach is believed to be the right one for achieving our desired economic diversification and national development.
3. As a stop-gap intervention, we launched the Agric for Food and Jobs Program (AFJP), originally conceived as an input loan for smallholder farmers across several commodities including maize, rice, cotton, groundnut, sorghum, cowpea, soybean, sesame, cassava and oil-palm. The scheme brought into a partnership the Central Bank of Nigeria, Commodity Associations and Agricultural Platform Companies for effective facilitation. This we believe will not only improve production significantly but also aid in the off-taking of the produce while providing input at reduced price due to economy of scale.
4. To ensure that the input gets to the intended farmers, we created a database for all the participating farmers in the AFJP. Unlike anything that has been done before, we set out to capture the biodata of the farmers and link this with the geographical information of their farmed plots, their crops and the volumes they produce. All this will fit into the monitoring and evaluation system of the project so that we can measure impact along the line. Although we initially set out to capture the data of 2.4million farmers across the country, the results from the exercise have encouraged the Economic Sustainability Plan team to expand the data capture to 10million farmers. This database is going to be the platform for government interventions going forward, putting an end to ghost schemes and other unscrupulous practices in the agricultural industry.
5. We are all aware of the troubles that our nation is going through with respect to the farmers-herders clashes which have often produced violent and expensive consequences. This administration is more committed than ever to resolve this problem on a more permanent solution. The National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) has been adjudged worldwide to be a well-conceived project which seeks to transform our livestock sector from nomadic-dependent sector into an organized ranching one. To this end, 22 State and the Federal Capital Territory have registered with the NLTP Office, out of which 10 States have created their own teams which have been trained by the Federal Office. Seven of these 10 States have also earmarked about 19 Grazing Reserves for the implementation of the NLTP, with a total land size of approximately 400,00 hectares.
6. It is therefore safe to say, that the NLTP, when fully implemented will bring an end to the incessant clashes between the farmers and herdsmen and at the same time introduce the herders to the modern way of raising cattle, with all the added benefits of improved feeding, improved animal and human health, genetic improvement, value addition and better socio-economic standing for all participants. The aggregation of all players in the value chain at the implementation sites is also bound to improve the local economy of the communities within the vicinity of the grazing reserves. A bigger impact on Nigeria’s economy will be made when we are able to spend less on importation of dairy and beef products which currently constitute a significant percentage of Nigeria’s food import.
7. As a show of faith in our approach to resolving the livestock crisis, we have had enquiries from several international bodies on how they may participate in the scheme, either in financial or technical capacity. A Dutch consortium which is partnering the Federal Government for the implementation of the first pilot state was able to attract a grant from their home country of Netherlands for the start-up of the National Livestock Transformation Plan pilot in Nasarawa State. This pilot site will serve as a hub for knowledge and skills transfer to the pastoralists community, who will be encouraged and hand-held to adopt ranching, to practice what they have learnt. The necessary incentives shall also be given to the participating pastoralists. We keep receiving offers for participation in the scheme from within the country and the world at large and this has further strengthened the resolve of this administration to provide such an enabling environment capable of attracting investments into the sector.
Several other programmes have also been inaugurated
8. In order to encourage market access for our rice farmers and reduce Foreign Exchange ( FOREX) spending, rice was included in the list of items for which importation facility provision forex was stopped since the inception of this administration. The dividend of that action has been improvement in the quality of rice processed within Nigeria, with some of them rivalling the erstwhile popular foreign brands. This has also led to improve earnings for the rice farmers and placed their association, RIFAN, at a vantage point for negotiating loan deals for farmers with funding entities. There has also been an influx of new rice farmers as the profitability of rice farming has significantly improved, thereby providing opportunities for young people to engage in farming. The establishment of rice mills across the country created back-linkage with consequent increase in employment opportunities.
9. Agricultural productivity can only improve through mechanization of production activities. In our effort to improve the agricultural production profile of the country, we have entered into a partnership with the government of Brazil through one of their foremost technology transfer institution, the Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV). This partnership has yielded an Agricultural Mechanisation loan to the tune of nine hundred and ninety five million euros(€995m). This shall be granted to Nigerian entrepreneurs to establish Service Centres across all the 774 Local Governments of the country, selling services to all categories of farmers and thereby helping to improve their productivity. The service centres shall be of either a Type 1, supporting production activities; or a Type 2, supporting processing and packaging activities.
10. We also have the target to improve on the export front and to this end, necessary support is being given for increase in the export of Agricultural commodities like Sesame, Hibiscus, Cotton and Sorghum. The Nigerian Export Promotion Council has been working with the Ministry of Agriculture to exploit our strategic advantage in the production of these commodities, improving our production protocols to conform with internationally acceptable standards, maintenance of an exporters’ directory and ‘Exporter certificate verification’ portal, generation of Product map and improving our visibility through the attendance of International Trade Shows. All this is geared towards improving our export profile thereby improving our Forex Earning capacity which is necessary at this period of oil market volatility.
11. Improved productivity of our soil will be nearly impossible without the use of fertilizers. But first, we wish to know the status of our soil. Funds have been released for soil analysis across the length and breadth of the country and about 50% of the planned number of samples have already been collected. We have also been able to attract private sector investment into fertilizer production, examples of which include the Dangote Fertilizer plant, a mega establishment that will really attend to much of our market space. We also have investments in fertilizer production from the BUA Group and a couple of others and with all these, non-availability of fertilizers will soon be a thing of the past. The Federal Government however is still committed to subsidy for small scale farmers.
12. Also in the line of cutting forex spending due to importation of food items, there has been increasing investment in the sugar industry and we currently have several sugar production plants and sugar-cane plantation around the country, all spear-headed by private sector investment. It is our belief that within the next 3 to 4 years, importation of sugar will stop. There has also been massive investment to increase our palm oil, cassava, cocoa and coffee output, and these are beginning to bring in foreign earnings for the country. All these have been possible due to the creation of an investment friendly environment and the encouragement of ease of doing business for investors.
13. All around growth in the agricultural sector will happen a lot faster with abundance of knowledge. In order to ensure this, the Ministry has embarked on increasing the number of available extension workers in the different aspects of our operations. This year, about one thousand two hundred extension workers have been trained. With the Green Imperative Project launching soon, there is a component of it that will see to the training of extension workers in agricultural mechanization and other important aspects of crop and livestock operations. Such extension workers will be available to support further government interventions, thereby boosting our productivity exponentially.
14. As part of the strategies to implement the Nigerian Correctional Service act, the Nigerian Prisons Service established farms which are to serve as training grounds to inmates serving time at the different prisons. Prison farms are essential for the new correctional services act to fulfil its aim of reforming, rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders. Due to the multifunctional nature of agriculture, farm activities in Nigerian prisons have the potential to be the industrial and economic springboard from which inmates take off when their jail term is completed. In view of the increasing global emphasis on rehabilitation services and programs for prison inmates, engaging inmates in more agricultural activities will help them earn a living upon release from prison. Earning a decent living through agriculture will subsequently reduce the possibility of a large number of inmates reoffending as soon as they are released and consequently go back to prison.
15. Many of the projects being set up by the Federal Government have components that cater to soil and environmental health. This is being done through the adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture and Regenerative Technologies. As no country is spared the effect of climate change, we believe in doing our bit towards the conservation of our planet and the same message is passed to farmers at every opportunity, to drive the adoption of climate smart practices.
16. A major hallmark of our agricultural interventions is inclusiveness. We have tried to cater to youths, women and many other demographic considerations in our implementation strategies. I would therefore like to implore everyone here-present to follow suit, as well as imbibe the spirit of transparency and cooperation.
17. I thank the facilitators of this meeting and I wish us all a happy deliberation’’
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