The minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has hinted that arrangements have been concluded with the aim of supplying all the basic inputs to farmers across the federation to ensure they produce enough food, even though flood has affected some areas.
According to him, in order to prepare ahead of time, appropriate authorities are contacted informing further that some critical stakeholders in the sector have agreed to ensure availability of weather index to farmers as well as a comprehensive farm insurance policies that will serve as ‘shocks absorber’.
Dr. Adesina made this public in Abuja while addressing journalists at the World Food Day Celebration during which he also announced the government resolution not to go into rice importation.
“We are also ensuring that, four hundred thousand hectres of rice farm comes on stream in most of the affected areas. Government is also providing planting materials in yam and cassava in addition to re-capitalizing and re-stuffing our grain reserves”, he added.
The minister also pointed out that “doubling up production” in the affected areas has reached an advanced stage in which the areas within such states that were not ravaged by the flood will be given adequate seeds and fertilizers that will go a long way in producing enough food that will feed the affected areas.
In addition the above measures, he announced several other robust programs in fisheries and animal husbandry in order to ensure availability of meat.
“Nigeria will not face any famine or any food scarcity because of the flood that has affected some parts of the state. This is because the federal government has taken concrete steps to ensure that the situation is used to improve on what is left. We have put mechanisms in place to ensure that all one hundred thousand metric tones of early maturing maize that takes only 60 days is distributed to farmers across all the affected areas. We are confident that, under this arrangement, five hundred tones will be realized under the dry season farming that is the backbone of this arrangement”.