Nigeria To Up Rice Production To 12.8m Tonnes

Nigeria is to raise rice production from 4.1m tonnes to 12.8 million tonnes by 2018, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, Alhaji Salihu Gusau has said.

Speaking in Minna on Monday at the launching of the document on the National Rice Development, Gusau said that the programme would be executed under the Coalition for Africa Rice Development Programme (CARD).

The Tides source reports that CARD and Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) initiative seek to double rice production in sub-Saharan Africa from 100,000 tonnes to 20 million tonnes over 10 years.

The Permanent Secretary said that the programme in Nigeria would place priority on post-harvest, land, seed and irrigation development as well as adequate supply of inputs.

According to him, available data indicate that annual milled rice demand in the country is five million tonnes, while domestic production is just 2.21 million tonnes, with a national deficit of 2.79 million tonnes, but annual rice importation stands at $695 million.

He said Nigeria, in its quest for self-sufficiency in food production as a means of achieving poverty reduction and food security, was among the 12 pilot countries selected for the first phase of CARD implementation.

Gusau said the Federal Government recognised Niger as the leading rice producing state in the country.

In his remarks, the Governor, Dr Babangida Aliyu, noted that in spite of the large hectares of land suitable for rice cultivation, Nigeria still imported the commodity in large quantity.

“With the estimated 4.6million hectares of land suitable for rice production, less than 1.6 million hectares are currently under cultivation,’’ he said, adding that for the rice initiative to be a success, the rice cartel must be broken.

The governor called on the Federal Government to raise the import duty on rice importation and concentrate on the development of local production.

In an Interview with the source, Mr Moses Adewuyi, Director in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, said that under the programmme, emphasis would be placed on irrigated and rain-fed lowland rice development.

He said there was an urgent need to rehabilitate all the existing irrigation schemes and put more land under cultivation.