By Jimoh Babatunde

Delta state commissioner for Agriculture, Barrister Misan Ukubeyinje, has said that agriculture is central to the administration of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, but noted that lack of accurate data on farmers in the state was a major challenge.

Ukubeyinje explained that the ministry is struggling to have accurate data on agriculture in the state as that will assist them in service delivery.

During an interview in Lagos, Ukubeyinje said “even though we have registration of farmers, we have not been able to have the right registration of farmers and farms.

“He said to the governor, agriculture is central to his administration’s goal of building an economy without oil, “the policy of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan is to develop the rural area through agriculture and that they are currently working on aquaculture and the traditional crops where they have comparative advantage.

“Cassava is one of the crops, we are working on that seriously and we are working with Federal government on that. We are working on how to improve on the processing and packaging as well as other value chains.”

While explaining that the government has set aside huge sum of money for massive food production, he said “We plan to achieve this by ensuring that farmers operate in clusters so that mechanisation can be effective and we are able to reach them whenever we want to.

Ukubeyinje added “we want to ensure that rice and cassava production go beyond consumption stage into commercialisation because we have the terrain and potentials.”

“We have a vision for rice production in the state, we have a policy that we have charged  each local government to  produce rice, we have a policy that ask them to acquire 25 hectare of land for rice cultivation and the government  just accepted the committee we raised on that.”

He said that though Delta was not among the states in the country ranked by the Federal Government as rice producing states, it had the potential to produce the commodity in large quantity to feed its people.

The Agriculture commissioner said on the production side of the sector that they are open to partnering with the private sector as they are currently working with the Bank of Industry in terms of Feed mills as well as Obasanjo Farms on poultry.

“On our relationship with obasanjo farms, we have a company, OFN/Delta, it is a large scale farm that can take care of the poultry needs of the state, it can take care of the feed mills and other out growers need, and it is an equity arrangement.

Speaking on  small holder farmers in the state , Ukubeyinje  said they are aware of the role the  small holder farmers play in the food security  of the nation  and  that inform  the provision of loans and agro inputs to them.

“We just distributed N1b loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria to small scale farmers and the lowest amount they got was N500, 000. We are aware of the role of the small holder farmers and we cannot abandon them.”

He added “the important thing about peasant farming is that we will be able to feed ourselves, this will reduce hunger.”
The state commissioner for Agriculture  explained that  the need to support  its small holder farmers  informed why they will still go ahead to  supply them with fertilizer, despite the Federal government   program on the e-wallet .

“The complain of fertilizer diversion is from the Federal government, the minister who did the research said the diversion was from them who buy and sell to us, we have told them that the e wallet thing will not get to our farmers on time, so we still need to cater for our farmer if we don’t do that we will be blamed for whatever happens.”

He said the administration’s policies and programs have gone a long way in reducing anger and violence in the state as many of the youths are empowered farmers through the Youth Empowerment through Agriculture (YETA), and the Songhai Delta project.