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Insecurity: FG allays fear of food shortage by 2015

By BusinessNews Staff on May 11, 2014

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, yesterday allayed fears of food security challenges in the country by 2015 as a result of the current insecurity, especially in the North-east and North-central parts of the country.

Adesina spoke while fielding questions from journalists in during award conferred on him by the management of Verod Capital for excellence in agricultural reforms.

The minister said: “I feel highly honoured today to see both the developed and developing countries coming to Nigeria to learn about the agricultural electronic wallet pioneered by Nigeria. “The credit goes to President Goodluck Jonathan, for his tenacity in pushing reform process.”

Asked on the likelihood of food shortag by 2015 because of the security challenges in Borno, Adamawa, Benue and Plateau States, he said: “First and foremost, we are producing more food than ever before as a country. “In the last two years we have produced 15 million metric tonnes of food, which is compared to 20 million metric tons of food that we say we are going to produce by 2015.

“This year, for example, rice in terms of actual production, we have become self-sufficient in paddy production and we produced 2.9 million metric tonnes additional rice last year, and in 2012 it was 1.4 million metric tonnes additional rice. If you look at what we are going to do this year, we are expecting to be able to do an additional 3 million metric tonnes of rice and in terms of maize we are hoping to do 3.5 million metric tonnes of additional maize.

Adesina said government was taking measures to ramp up food supply. “This year we are going to ramp up food supply quite a lot, taking advantage of the good rainfall that we have had. I do not anticipate any food shortage and we would not have any shortfall for next year.”

However, he stated that it was unfortunate the challenges are there, adding: “I think the food production that we are ramping up is more than enough to compensate for any shortfall that we might have.
He added: “We have strategic grain reserves and we are going to buy back a lot of the food being produced so that we can store it and be able to feed ourselves. We would get over the insecurity problem, but we are not going to have any food problem or challenge.”

On the expectations from the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) in the country, he added: “This WEF is a huge success for Nigeria, it is a sign of confidence in our economy, a sign of confidence in the leadership of President Jonathan as this is the first time ever that we would have the WEF held in Nigeria. It tells you what the President is doing and the reputation that we have globally.

“It is wonderful for agriculture. We just started the ‘Grow Africa’ event this morning (yesterday) which brought together big companies, leaders all over the world to talk about agriculture, as a business.

“Here our president was remarkable. He laid out very clearly what he is doing and he is the one running it with all the political support that he is giving me to present agriculture as a business and ensure that we are getting a lot of investments in the sector.”

The minister estimated that about $4 billion of private sector commitment is being attracted into the sector alone with the WEF being hosted by the country.

“We have shared our success story with the rest of the world in terms of how much agriculture is changing in the country and changing the attitudes of Nigerians.

“You would appreciate this in looking at the number of seed companies that we have in the country, the number of seed companies has increased from five when we started two years ago, today we have 80 seed companies and you should look at this in terms of the volume of seeds that these companies will produce and sell to farmers and not to government.

“It rose from 5, 000 metric tonnes two years ago to about 50,000 metric tonnes last year. And this year they are going to do 78,000 metric tonnes of seeds. And the banks are lending more than ever before to the sector and we have shared with the world our success story on the electronic wallet where our farmers now get improved seedling via the mobile phones,” he said.

According to him, Nigeria is the first country in Africa and in the world to develop that system and countries like India, Brazil, Spain and China and several other African countries are coming here to learn from us.

He said: “What we are getting from all this is the great opportunity for us to show case what we have done.

It is a great opportunity to have investors look at what we have done and say they didn’t know that Nigeria was such a viable country in agriculture and promise to invest here. Syngenta is the largest seed company in the world and they are here in our country and I think that is fantastic for Nigeria.

[This Day]

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