By John Oba
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has said that with the new drive in rice production and the amount of arable rice land in the country, Nigeria has the capacity to produce sufficient rice for its populace.
Adesina who made this known at the weekend during a good morning Nigeria television programme on Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) saying that rice can be grown in all the states in Nigeria except for one state.
He said that the government had increased the area of cultivation in rice by 1.9 million hectares, adding that farmers in Nigeria are getting 5 to 6 tons per hectare yield with the new variety of rice introduced recently in the country.
Adesina also said that the importation status on rice has continued to go down. He stressed “When we started, only 10 states grow rice, but now, 22 states are growing rice. The total gross of value of rice added to the domestic economy over the last 3 years was about N750 billion”.
He said currently, farmers and small scale processors have a net income worth N407 billion from the current transformation in the rice sub-sector.
“So you can see that we are creating value to the domestic economy because we are engaging people to work, we are also increasing the GPD of those states”.
The minister also revealed that importers now get the empty bags of imported rice, give it to the Nigerian rice millers to fill it with rice, and then they will sell it at the cost of the foreign rice.
Speaking on the new rice policy, Adesina said that the policy which raised tariff on imported rice was done to give Nigerian farmers a fighting chance to increase their production.
He therefore said that the new rice policy which has been relaxed gave rise to the establishment of small scale millers all over the country adding that it really increased production.
