The Minister of Budget and National Planning Atiku Bagudu has raised issues on the challenges facing agriculture which he said is not only limited to the insecurity but the high cost of fuel.
Making his remarks at an
interactive session with the Senate Committees on Finance,
Appropriations, Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions he said if care is not taken, there are some five local Governments in the North where 70% of the cultivation may not be possible because of fuel cost.
“From our perspectives particularly from Budget and planning, there are places today in about 18 states in the country where you can still Plant rice for the dry season farming, including the constituency of the chairman of the National planning, but in 5 local governments, where if care is not taken not for reasons of insecurity, 70% of the planted area might not be planted because of fuel cost.
He said the same thing in the constituency of senator Adamu Aliero in a number of places.
“So the balancing of the reforms and ensuring the necessary measures have been implemented urgently in order to ensure that we even support the reforms and the commendable act of removing fuel subsidy needs to be supported by measures that support domestic production in other to achieve the full impact and benefit.”
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari on his part said the issue of food security, which is availability, affordability of food are being challeged.
He attributed the first challenge to COVID19 which impacted on Agriculture and all other sectors.
At the same time he said the flooding of 2021, and also the Naira redesign of 2022, 2023 at the point of harvest when government came up with the policy of redesigning of Naira really impacted on the availability of cash.
“Early 2023 when farmers were just preparing for planting they had no cash anywhere.
“Access to capital for farmers is very key, in addition an exiting Government did not plan to do wet season cultivation for 2023, I don’t think there was any impact or any intervention against the 2023 cultivation and that also impacted on the quantum of harvest in 2023.
“We have had two programs, one is the wheat program in which Jigawa has a lot of impact and 14 other states but the second phase of rice that is just about to roll out now is being challenged now in terms of fuel and in terms of input because we have seen some of the challenges that the farmers face in the 2023 wheat program even though government subsidized imput by 50% it was a tall order for farmers to come up with their own portion.
“So what we are trying to do is to bridge that gap, we dont want to make it a situation where it will be viewed as the other programs in the past where they felt it as a largess.
He said there are farmers that are ready to go back to farm they are excited about it but there are challenges in security and even fuel cost.
However, he said they are trying to work assiduously with the Ministry of Finance, as the president had already given them his support on the second phase.
“We intend to do between 100 and 250 hectares for rice alone in the dry season farming for the short Medium Term. Let me say for the short term there is scarcity of paddy and scarcity of maize.
“The next phase we have about 50000 hectares for maize to cultivate in the dry season now. Luckily with maize you can do multiple cropping when there is irrigation but what we are faced with today is the undocumented exports of food to our neighboring countries.
“Today the 1Cefas is N2.50 that is to say 100cefa is 2200. That use to be N400 some few years ago. When you look at our neighboring countries, all 4 neighboring countries around us the Cefas which is hard currency and because of the devaluation of the Naira our food is the cheapest round the neighborhood.
“So you find a lot of undocumented exports, smuggling across our porous borders to these neighboring countries.
“In addition, the other angle that we have over the period is the unavailability of foreign exchange. A lot of investors, be it Indian, Chinese, Turkeys who are operating in this country buy our crops that are sought after outside, like soya beans and sesame and buy it at exorbitant price just to earn foreign exchange and the worst part is most of these monies are not repatriated back to us.
“Export is a good thing for us but when you don’t earn the foreign exchange and it is not repatriated back to us, and government dont have any income from it, I am sorry that is not a good sign.
“So what we are trying to do here is we are trying to ramp up production, I think it is an issue of economics between supply and demand but unfortunately we have to see how we can secure food for our 230m citizens.
“At the same time if this economic situation continues then you have to seal up the border which is against the ECOWAS issue or produce for the whole of West Africa, that is the unfortunate thing but if we can secure the land and have farmers go back to the farm I am sure we can do it, we have 70m heaters available in Nigeria so these are the challenges that we find ourselves in.
However, he expressed especially but his ministry would soon roll out dry season farming between the next 8 to 10 days. He said they would achieve that with the help of the President and the coordinating minister of the economy
He said they want to support the farmers for the dry season farming.