Domestic rice production gets boost riding on FG’s agric policy

With billions of naira being invested by private sector investors on rice production, industry watchers believe this is an endorsement of the Federal Government’s agricultural policy.

In line with that, Richard Mbaram, chief executive, Agro Nigeria, noted that the Federal Government’s intervention policy on rice had continued to boost the production in Nigeria.

Mbaram quoted Usman Dakingari, the Kebbi State governor, who said “because of the rice revolution under Adesina, we now count rice in kilometres, not in hectares,” and Idris Wada, governor of Kogi State, who said “we have turned our land into massive rice baskets by fully aligning with the agricultural transformation of the Federal Government.” These, Mbaram said were affirmations of the success of the rice revolution in Nigeria.

Mbaram also noted the springing up of different made-in-Nigeria rice from locally produced paddy, which has led to the state-of-the-art rice milling facilities at different locations in the country, saying the Stallion Group now operated a fully integrated state-of-the-art mill in the country with an aggregate capacity of 360,000 metric tons per annum.

According to him, the sound policies of the Federal Government under the minister of agriculture on rice has now shifted interest of majority of rice farmers to the high quality varieties, with long grain characteristics that are now preferred by the integrated rice mills. He said this was accomplished through the massive distribution of high yielding varieties to farmers two years ago by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry, under Akinwunmi Adesina through massive public-private partnership with local seed companies and the Africa Rice Centre, launched free distribution of Faro 44 and Faro 52 to rice farmers across the country and three bags of fertiliser per farm every planting season, which has prompted a massive shift to the new high yielding varieties.

From records made available, almost 2 million farmers had adopted the new varieties, while average yields have increased from 1.5 to 5 tons per hectare. Quoting the Independent Survey of food production in Africa, as declared by Moussa Seck of the Pan African Agribusiness and Agro-Industry Consortium (PanAAC), at the 2012 edition of the Africa Agribusiness forum, which stated that “Nigeria has overtaken Egypt as the largest food producer in Africa,” Mbaram said the impressive rise in the number of the integrated rice mills across the country was indicative of the progress reports recorded, since up to 15 new integrated rice mills had now been established.