Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Muhammed Sabo Nanono, has flagged off distribution of farm inputs and presentation of extension materials to Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), and Agricultural Research Outreach Centre (AROC) to farmers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) at Kiyi village, a suburb of kuje area council, Abuja.
The minister, while flagging off the distribution of extension materials at Kiyi village over the weekend said, at the beginning of his tenure, the Federal Executive Council instructed him to do everything possible to uplift the living standard of the rural farmers, and improve the income capacity of rural households, so that farmers would grow in income capacity.
Nanono noted that, on assumption of office, he studied files of the ministry and agencies and identified ARCN as one of the agencies positioned to do the work.
He said ARCN has been running adopted village farming programmes and adopted school project demonstration farm centres in the FCT Abuja but was unable due to poor funding.
The minister said ARCN is coordinating 15 National Agricultural Research Institutes and 11 Federal Colleges of Agriculture in Nigeria, adding that these institutions were conducting research to help farmers produce more food for Nigeria, to produce higher quality foods, fast growing crops, animal crops and animals that can resist diseases and also withstand difficult weather and draught. “These technologies are all for the benefit of our farmers,” he said.
He pointed out that through this Agricultural Research Outreach System, ARCN is bringing these technologies to farmers freely to boost their production.
He said President Muhammadu Buhari is in support and care for the progress of our farmers in Nigeria and urged them to utilise inputs provided according to directives.
In his welcome address, Executive Secretary of Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), Professor Garba Sharubutu, said theft of crops by some miscreants at the demonstration farms, encroachment into the AROC demonstration farms by some farmers, inadequate and untimely release of funds to conduct on farm demonstration activities is one of the challenges ARCN-AROC is facing.
He said considering the importance and outcome of AROC activities in the adopted villages and schools, the council is planning to increase farmers’ access to modern and improved agricultural technologies to boost food production and improve food security in the country.
Earlier in his speech, the village head of Kiyi, Alhaji Jibrin Shaba, described the government’s efforts in solving rural farmers’ problem as commendable and called on government to provide essential amenities like good roads and water to rural farmers in the area to enable them do more in farm production.
The monarch also appealed to government to help recover their land allocated to other people because farmers in the area don’t have enough farm land do their farming again.
