*Rice awardee promises export
The Agric Minister State, Alhaji Mustapha Baba Shehuri has posited that constant meeting with farmers is a pineace to ending food hunger in the country, just as a rice farmer, Alhaji Muazu, an awardee also assured Nigerians soonest exporting of processed rice to other countries.
Alhaji Mustapha Baba Shehuri said this during the roundtable discussion on Agro-preneurs Success Stories and Mentorship Clinic to mark the 2021 world Food Day at Abuja.Shehuri who assured millions of small-scale farmers of the readiness of the ministry to ensure food security also stressed
the need for constant meetings with these primary food producers so as to have
more informative interactions towards effective executions of strategies to end
hunger in the country.
He suggests the need to fix the
disconnect in the agricultural system adding that ‘’ the holding of such gathering should be constant
with farmers to help them to create effective impact through productive
information sharing towards raising awareness on food security and ending
hunger together’’
The state minister encourages farmers
on the need to ensure standard productivity that would enhance export of
agricultural commodities without any fear of being rejected in any market
outside the country for more economic earning and job creation.
Earlier, the main minister, Dr.
Mohammed Abubarkar assured stakeholders in the sector the determination of the
Federal Government (FG) to ensure self sufficiency and enriched food nutrition
towards wealth creation along the value chains system through proactive
investment to execute the government policies and programmes.
Abubakar called on investors to
explore the potentials in Nigeria’s livestock, horticulture, fisheries and
other sub sectors of the agricultural value chains, saying their investment
would ensure the desired dream of robust economic and sustainable viable
commercial agriculture in the country.
According to him “The potentials across crops,
livestock, horticulture and fisheries sub-sectors are enormous. Therefore, it
is the ingenuity of entrepreneurs like some of you here that would add value to
our produce and guarantee the revenue generation potentials of the sector
‘’The expectations we have in
agriculture to take Nigeria to the promise land can only be achieved when our
entrepreneurs take deliberate actions to invest in different value-chains. It
is the involvement of entrepreneurs like you that would provide innovative
solutions to the immense challenges in the sector”
The minister credited the sector for
being the only one that could attain a level of appreciative economic
contribution to the country through fractional productivity despite the last
year pandemic disease, saying ‘’ it is
on record that Agriculture was the only sector in Nigeria that recorded
marginal growth during the Covid-19 lock-down spanning through the 4th quarter
of 2019 to 1st and 2nd quarter of year 2020, with an average contribution of
24.23% to the country’s GDP, (Statistic 1st/2nd Quarter Report, 2020). The
impressive 2021 second quarter growth rate of 5.01% of the country’s Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) released on Thursday 19th August by the National Bureau
of Statistics (NBC) has agriculture (crop production) and food manufacturing as
major contributors’’
One of the award recipients being
recognised for positive contributions in the sector, Alhaji Shehu Muazu while
speaking to journalists said that more processed rice would be exported by 2022
as he commended the effort of President Mohammadu Buhari’s government to
repositioning the agricultural sector towards commercialization and economic
empowerment of farmers
Muazu said that "we are very optimistic that before the
Buhari government leaves power, we would have started exporting more rice
outside the country to other countries", adding this would create more
jobs across the country as it is expected that more foreign exchange will also
be earned through this process.
Other recipients include; Governor Abubakar Atiku Bagudu of
Kebbi State, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Alhaji Muhammad Damakka, Otunba Dr. Gabriel
Ogunsanaya, Dr. Ayoola Oduntan, Dr. Graham Hefer , Mrs. Catherine Ezenyirieka
,the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR)
,Zaria.
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