Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development has signified it interest to collaborate with Monsanto, one of the world largest seed company on the provision of improved seedling to help Nigeria farmers.
Minister of state for Agriculture, Mrs Asabe Ahmed stated this recently when the vice president, International Row Crops and Global Vegetable Business, Mr Michael J. Frank led a delegation to her office in Abuja.
Ahmed who welcome the Mosanto executives to Nigeria said the ministry is ready to collaborate with any organization in the bid to make Nigeria self-sufficient in food production.
Speaking Frank said Mosanto which is a $50 billion company focuses its attention 100% on agriculture and is set to help Nigeria farmers increase their yields through the use of improved seed, and bio technology and agronomic technologies that is far more efficient using less water, less fertilizer and less pesticide more diligently.
“We have been around for a lot of years now but we do not have business here in Nigeria, we been in Africa for over four years but we never established our presence in Nigeria but we have now decided that this is the right time to come into Nigeria and make investment, have partnership and help farmers in Nigeria increase their yields especially maize and cotton farmers.
“We know that discussion on bio technology is still on going in Nigeria, but in most country where bio technology is not allowed we still have our seed business successfully. So we can sell seed with or without bio technology. We just know that as a tool it helps farmers.
“Part of our vision is to increase small farmers economic livelihood because over 90% of farmers all over the world are small farmers and they farmer less than 30% of the total world land areas, so small farmers are very important in the world of agricultural technology., we do that through better seeds, biotechnology, technical training for farmers and through economic services,” he said.