From Okwe Obi, Abuja
In a bid to combat food inflation in the country and as a direct response to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s declaration of emergency on food security, the Federal Government will on Saturday, November 25, flag off the 2023/2024 dry season farming.
Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, will lead several other dignitaries to Hadejia, Jigawa State, where the ceremony will take place.
Technical Advisor on Strategic Communication, Kingsley Osadolor, in a statement yesterday explained that a range of agricultural inputs, including seeds, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides, will be delivered to farmers at the occasion. The Federal Government is subsidizing the agricultural inputs by 50 per cent.
According to him, the 2023/2024 dry season farming is being boosted by an African Development Bank facility and implemented under the National Agricultural Growth Scheme and Agro-Pocket (NAGS-AP) project.
“The implementation is ICT-driven with earlier steps taken to geo-locate farmlands, enumerate, register, and cluster no fewer than 250,000 farmers.
“The dry season farming is expected to take place in all the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
“One critical requirement among others is availability of irrigable land where the dry season farming will take place.
“The crops being targeted for the 2023/24 season are wheat, for which seeds have been imported from Mexico; rice, maize, sorghum, soyabeans, and cassava.
“Wheat farmers have been guaranteed off-take of their produce by the Flour Millers Association of Nigeria.
“The Hon. Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen Kyari, describes the flag-off as a milestone in realizing the Renewed Hope Agenda,” he said.
He added that the availability of agricultural inputs and machinery will enhance the cultivation of about one hundred and twenty thousand hectares in different parts of the country.