The Executive Director, Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), Dr Tobi Oluwatola, has raised concerns over the low rate of animal feed production in Nigeria, saying the country currently produces less than 25% of its demand for livestock.
Dr. Oluwatola said this while addressing the press during a feed summit jointly organised by CJID, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in collaboration with Sahel Consulting in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said Nigeria need to buckle up in feed feed production as feed represents 70% of livestock production.
“We in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Sahel Consulting decided for this particular dialogue was that animal feed is a very critical aspect of the value chain because it represents 70 per cent of the cost of livestock production, and livestock production is where we get our proteins and we are really lagging behind on that, we are producing less than 25 per cent of our demand, so we really need to buckle up in that respect, that is why that aspect has been tackled.
“But again, it doesn’t end here, the conversation, next year, it will be another aspect that we will pick in other sectors as well,” he said.
He said they hope to achieve self-sufficiency in animal feed production at the end of the summit and create millions of jobs especially for the youth.
“The goal we hope to achieve is to make sure that we have self-sufficiency in terms of animal feed production, make sure that we create jobs. In the animal feed industry, we believe we can create 20 million jobs.
“We also hope to ensure that the cost of livestock production in general comes down, and that may means that there will need for some subsidies”, he added.
Programmes Research Officer, Agriculture Desk at CJID, Ntiedo Ekott, added that “this is the second National Feed Summit that we bring stakeholders together to discuss on the National Feed Policy document and also to harness the alternative feed resources supply and to look at the core challenges that affects food and feed security in the country.”
Fisayo Kayode, Senior Program Manager at Sahel Consulting said this year’s summit is looking beyond the conventional feed sources to seeing how they can also integrate farmers into understanding the importance of sourcing alternative feed resources.
