*Says dry season farming now a national project

BY GABRIEL EWEPU

ABUJA—President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday announced the sum of N14 billion to support farmers engaged in dry season farming in the country.

He made the announcement while launching the 2014 dry season farming in Abuja.

According to President Jonathan, dry season farming has now become a national project that subsequent administrations can leverage on, especially with the enactment of a law to back it up by the National Assembly.
Jonathan said it was imperative to increase the support for dry season farming, following the huge number of states and farmers keying into the programme and the increased production of food after it was launched in 2013.

The President said: “You know our timely effort to transform the agriculture sector, in this regard we launched the Agriculture Transformation Agenda in 2011,the goal of adding 11 million metric tons of food for our domestic food supply, and changed our approach to agriculture, we no longer take agriculture as a development programme.

”I am announcing today the provision of N14 billion to support dry season farming for the 2014 season. Last year it was N9 billion and as more states and farmers continue to key into it we shall increase the amount of money.

“I received report that over 600, 000 farmers had already registered to produce food in this year’s dry season, this is an increase of 9.5 per cent of number of farmers who participated last year, and with 20 states now registered to participate in this year’s programme compared to 10 states last year.”

He acknowledged the fact that there were challenges in the sector last year, particularly the 2012 floods that almost crippled food production and predictions of looming food scarcity in 2013.

“We had our challenges in our journey and no doubts about that. In 2012 we witnessed a devastating flood, which was the worst in recent history, and our critics said there will be food crisis but we proved them wrong and there was no food crisis in our country after the flood.

”This I told the Minister of Agriculture to come up with a food production plan because of lessons experienced by our farmers. We provided a N9 billion fund to support our farmers to recover from the impact from 2012 flood, especially rice production of which government is committed to rice sufficiency hopefully.

“Over 265, 000 rice farmers of the 10 leading rice producing states in the north, namely, Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Kano, Kastina, Bauchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kogi, and Niger benefited from the fund. Our farmers showed resilience, food production recovered from the devastating flood and our farmers produced 1 million metric tons of paddy rice. And across the country our farmers produced 16 million metric tons of food,” he said.

The President also assured Nigerian farmers of  his administration’s support as he promised to ensure that the living condition of farmers will improve as government had put in place mechanisms to boost their activities.
He said:  “I assure you that as President, I am ready to support Nigerian farmers, and we will continue to work with you that is why today I am announcing that dry season food production support in Nigeria has become a national policy and let me thank the honourable members and the Chairman, House Committee on Agriculture for even informing us as a level of governance as the executive.

“The parliament even has assured us by taking the stake higher than just a mere policy by enacting a law to back it up, and we commend the House of Representatives and the Senate, and we will corporate with them in this regard.”

However, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Femi Adesina, said farmers in the country had taken the economy to greater heights through increased food production and promised that the government would continue to explore ways to further boost food production.

Also speaking was the Governor of Kogi State, Captain Idriss Wada, who lauded the agricultural transformation agenda which his administration had adopted for the state and the tremendous improvement achieved in rice and cassava production.

Meanwhile, the Governor of Kebbi State, Alhaji Saidu Dakingari, said his administration had been able to use agriculture to curb unemployment and insecurity, and had become one of the top rice producing states in Nigeria.

In a goodwill message delivered by the Chairman, Rice Farmers Association, Mohammed, urged the federal government to step up the fight against rice smugglers across the land borders as it was negatively affects the production of rice in the country.