GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO TAKE URGENT ACTION ON AGRICULTURE

President Muhammadu Buhari has promise to strengthen the country’s agricultural sector and make concerted efforts to increase local food production to dampen escalating food prices.

In his address at the National Economic Council Retreat on the economy held at the State House Conference Centre, Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Buhari noted that food production in the country have become abysmally low and they require urgent action.

“Today, both the peasant and the mechanized farmers agree with the general public that food production and self-sufficiency require urgent government action. For too long government policies on agriculture have been half-hearted, suffering from inconsistencies and discontinuities. Yet our real wealth is in farming, livestock, hatcheries, fishery, horticulture and forestry.

“From the information available to me the issues worrying the public today are rising food prices, such as maize, corn, rice and garri; lack of visible impact of government presence on agriculture; lack of agricultural inputs at affordable prices, Cost of fertilizers, pesticide and labour compound the problems of farming. Extension services are virtually absent in several states; imports of subsidized food products such as rice and poultry discourage the growth of domestic agriculture; wastage of locally grown foods, notably fruit and vegetables which go bad due to lack of even moderate scale agro-processing factories and lack of feeder roads.”

These problems I have enumerated are by no means exhaustive and some of the solutions I am putting forward are not necessarily the final word on our agricultural reform objectives:
• First, we need to carry the public with us for new initiatives. Accordingly the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the States should convene early meetings of stakeholders and identify issues with a view to addressing them.

• Inform the public in all print and electronic media on government efforts to increase local food production to dampen escalating food prices.
• Banks should be leaned upon to substantially increase their lending to the agricultural sector. Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should bear part of the risk of such loans as a matter of national policy.
• States should increase their financial support through community groups. The appropriate approach should be through leaders of community groups such as farmers cooperatives.
• Provision of feeder roads by state governments to enable more effective evacuation of produce to markets and processing factories.”
The president recalled that when he was a schoolboy in the 1950’s the country produced one million tons of groundnuts in two successive years. “The country’s main foreign exchange earners were groundnut, cotton, cocoa, palm kernel, rubber and all agro/forest resources.
“Regional Banks and Development Corporations in all the three regions were financed from farm surpluses. In other words, our capital formation rode on the backs of our farmers. Why was farming so successful 60 years ago? The answers are simple: access to small scale credits, inputs (fertilizers, herbicides etc) and Extension services. NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.