Olam Farm urges FG to boost production of paddy rice


 Mr Mahesh Nimji the Project Coordinator, Olam Farm located in Nasarawa state, on Tuesday urged the Federal Government to create a paddy rice market that would link rice farmers to millers.
Nimji in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja decried the low availability of paddy rice for the company’s production capacity.
``First of all, the amount of paddy rice which is projected by several agencies including USAID in Nigeria is close to three million tonnes of paddy or more than that, but that is not what you see on ground.
``When you go to the market you will discover that the paddy rice is not that much.
``May be the reason is that most of the paddy rice grown are consumed within the vicinity of 50 to 100 kilometres from where they are produced and processed in small local mills around.
``We also do not know where to go and buy the paddy rice, when we go out; we discover it is not available.
``There is need for government to put in place a mechanism for growing more rice in Nigeria.
``Nigeria has a great potential to grow rice, if the government can come up with a mechanism to group farmers in Local Government Areas that grow rice together, it can empower them.
``That way we will not need to go into the fields to look for where to buy paddy rice.
He said when farmers are put in groups they would be encouraged to go into large production of rice.
The coordinator said Olam, the largest rice mill in the country, had 10 thousand hectares of land used to grow rice with about three thousand local employees.

‎
He said the company had out grower programmes through which it had supported over 20,000 rice, sesame, cocoa and cashew farmers to boost production across the country.
He urged government to encourage huge establishment in the country to invest in farming, saying that it would bring development to rural areas and create jobs

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tomato disease outbreak: Institute appeals for research funding

The National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan, has appealed for funding to carry out research and create awareness on the tuta absoluta pest on tomatoes. The Institute’s Head of Vegetable Programme, Dr Olagorite Adetula, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Friday that there was an urgent need to tackle the problem to save the economy. Adetula said the institute needed money to do surveillance survey of the pest/damage, ascertain the impact of the damage and proffer solution for eradicating the pest. She appealed to the Federal Government to help the institute get pheromones to lure and trap the pests and distribute to farmers. ``Spraying insecticides is not the best, the pest has high production rate, some of them can escape while spraying it and they will be resistant to the insecticide thereby causing us more cost. ``The pheromones can be used for six to eight weeks before changing it, it is very effective, the pest has short life cycle, wit
Read more

10,000 women farmers to be engaged in ECOWAS rice project – official

Image
 Mr Richard Olafare, the President, Seed Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria (SEEDAN) says 10,000 women will be engaged in the recently inaugurated Rice Seed Up-Scaling Project. This is contained in a presentation on the project made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday. Olafare said 8,000 youths would also be engaged in the scaling project. According to him, the number of women and youths represented 50 per cent and 40 per cent respectively of the 20,000 farmers that will participate in the project. NAN reports that the project is an initiative of the West Africa Seed Programme (WASP) in support of the ECOWAS Rice Offensive Programme that was inaugurated in 2014. Among other objectives, it is targeting the production of 60,000 metric tonnes of paddy rice for Nigeria by December 2017, using 1,200 certified seeds. The project is being implemented by SEEDAN in collaboration with the West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Re
Read more

NEGPRO project can create more jobs with inclusion of meat production— Badmus

•Tuns Farm leads food safety, quality system audit The Chairman , Tuns Farms Nigeria, Asiwaju Olatunde Badmus, has disclosed that the proposed one million jobs expected to be created through the National Egg Production Scheme (NEGPRO) can be doubled if extended to meat production. He made this known when a team from the office of the Vice President, Federal Ministries of Agriculture, Health and Education at the company’s headquarters in Osogbo, the Osun state capital recently. Olatunde Badmus, while sharing the company’s experience on chicken inclusion in the Osun state’s school meal program which the company has been handling since the introduction of the school feeding program four years ago, said they can achieve so much more in terms of job creation through meat production “As we speak, six state governors among who are Kebbi and Borno, have signalled their government’s preparedness to look into this and have invited TUNS farm to their states to discuss modalities for
Read more