NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
As Nigeria prepares to join the rest of the world to mark this year’s World Food Day, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abdullahi Sabi has announced that the federal government will support farmers massively during the dry season farming to produce more food.
Speaking during a visit to a farm cluster at Bwari Area Council, Federal Capital Territory, Senator Abdullahi, while calling farmers who have the intention to embark on dry season farming to proceed with the plans, said the Federal Government has plans for them.
“All farmers who have the opportunity for dry season farming, we have plans for them; they should be on the watch-out.
“In the next month, there will be dry season farming, and the wet season is almost closing. We are supporting back-to-back farming that is what we are going to encourage so that anywhere we are having opportunity to have irrigation farming, we are going to support that and we are partnering with all our stakeholders under the National Agriculture Growth Scheme agro-pocket programme, the Federal Ministry of water resources, we also have a joint action committee,” he noted.
While speaking at the World Food Day celebration, the Minister said that he decided to visit the farm cluster to see for himself what exactly is happening in the field.
“We have been developing clusters, we need to see how these clusters work, we have been dealing with farmers, we need to see the farmers where they are operating from, and that is why today we decided as part of the pre-world food day to visit some farmers’ groups and we have come here to the cluster group that is here in Bwari area council.
“In this cluster, you can see that they are sandwiched between urbanization and farming; we have seen the rice field, and most importantly is that here we are a plot of land, and cowpeas have been planted on it, and that is what you see all over the place.
“What gladdens me, art, in particular, is the fact that we presented to the nation just last Friday the annual wet season farming survey, and one it is that we show that there are a lot of challenges in terms of insecurity in some places, but significant progress has been recorded in many places and right here in the field, you heard the farmers confirming that even Bwari itself had its share of insecurity and sanity have returned and where we are today everybody is free and as you can see all manner of farming activities are ongoing”, he noted.
The Minister, however, said that what he saw was reassuring successes that were in tune with the renewed hope agenda of President Bola Tinubu.
“We are happy and cowpea is one of the food security crops, we have seen the rice, sorghum and we are happy and we will take the lessons from the various specialization of the Ministry, in terms of those dealing with crops, soil, agriculture inputs, and others, and I am sure it will inform our review that we will be doing as we improve our program design to get our farmers to perform what they know how to perform in the field while improving food production for our citizens”, he noted.
Furthermore, Senator Abdullahi said there are plans to strengthen the young farmers’ clubs in secondary schools as a way of encouraging the young ones to engage in farming as they grow.
“When we leave here, we are going to one of the schools where we are having our young farmers’ club. Remember, we partnered with the Office of the First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, where we looked at revamping the young farmers’ club in various schools.
“As a way of catching them young, we should encourage the young ones to understand what is happening while they are in school, and that way they will understand the value of producing food.”
