The Federal, government says it will provide cheap funds to farmers at five percent interest rate to assist them in the procurement of agricultural equipment and seedlings to aid food production. The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele stated this on Thursday at the launch of Ogun State's produced Mitros rice at the agro services corporation headquarters, Asero, Abeokuta.
Emefiele noted that the launching of the locally-produced Ofada and parboiled rice varieties was a pointer to the fact that the state government had keyed into the Federal Government’s agricultural revolution programme. He commended the state governor, Ibikunle Amosun for supporting the initiative launched 12 months ago when he visited the state along with other members of the Presidential Task Force on Agricultural Commodities and Production.
“During that visit, the governor took us round the three senatorial districts. We saw the fish ponds, we saw the poultries and we saw some rice farms. But he promised that in no distance time, he’s going to invite us and I am happy to be here today to witness this giant stride demonstrated by the rice pyramid that’s right here.
“Ogun State continues to demonstrate the urge to support the focus of the government to create jobs and to grow the economy. A country that doesn’t take agriculture seriously is naturally an unserious country.
“We are going to be looking at providing cheap funding at no more than five percent for those who are going to be assessing facilities to acquire Agric equipment like threshers, harvesters, or those who will be going into fish farming, or those who will be going into feed mills.”
The governor of Kebbi state, Abubakar Bagudu who is also a member of the Task Force lamented that despite the huge potentials in the country, Nigeria was still producing below 10 million metric tonnes of rice.
“All the 36 states of Nigeria have the capability of producing rice, of course, including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
“With rice, I believe we can achieve what we have achieved even with a commodity like crude oil. Because around the world, about 600 million metric tonnes of rice is produced every year, and in Nigeria, we are still producing a little less than 10 million.
“Our land size estimated by the Rice Farmers Association indicated that there are about 12 million rice farmers. This suggests that even if an average yield per farmer is the modest five tonnes, we should be producing 50 million tonnes, not under 10 million tonnes that we are currently producing.”
