Agriculture with Jimoh

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), AfDB and other stakeholders on Monday in Ibadan inaugurated a programme, Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), to revitalise agriculture in Africa. Speaking during the inauguration, Dr Jonas Chianu, AFDB Agricultural Economist and TAAT Programme Manager, said that the multi-year multi-partner TAAT programme was funded by the African Development Bank (AFDB). He said it was conceptualised based on ‘Africa Feeding African’ core priority of AFDB and aligned with the bank’s 10-year strategy (2013 to 2022) for inclusive and green growth in the continent. Chianu said that the programme was aimed at revitalising Africa’s agriculture and was conceived at a high-level conference on African agricultural transformation attended by experts in agriculture, the academia, and other stakeholders in Dakar in 2015. “TAAT heralds a new dawn in African agricultural transformation because of its key bene...

The Federal Government is planning to open up a minimum of 100,000 hectares of irrigable land through the 12 River Basin Development Authorities by 2020 to achieve food security. The plan is contained in Nigeria Economic Recovery and Growth Plan 2017-2020 (ERGP), a copy of which was obtained from the Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning on Tuesday in Abuja. The ERGP projects that Nigeria will make significant progress to achieve structural economic change with a more diversified and inclusive economy in five key areas by 2020. The key areas are stable macro-economic environment; achieve agriculture and food security; ensure energy sufficiency in power and petroleum products; and drive industrialisation focusing on Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as improve transportation infrastructure. The Ministries of Water Resources and Agriculture and Rural Development are expected to take the lead in projects and programmes that will help the government...

Rice millers in Kano State have attributed the high cost of locally-produced rice to the increasing cost of production of the commodity in the country. Mr Liman Muhammed, spokesperson, Medium and Small Scale Rice Millers Association in the state, said this during a visit to some rice mills in Kano on Wednesday. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the price of 50kg locally-produced rice ranges between N20,000 and N22,000 while that of imported rice is between N12,000 and N15,000. “For locally-produced rice, the cost of production is high. Our people are used to the imported rice but with government’s intervention, we are seeing good quality rice. “Most imported rice have spent more than 10 years in the storage and are not good enough but the local rice has more nutritional value. “The number of people consuming local rice is increasing and if everybody along the rice value chain is empowered, the cost of production will reduce,’’ he said. He ...

No fewer than 750 farmers in Bauchi Federal Constituency recently received training in irrigation farming, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Ado Danladi-Maigoro, has said. In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Bauchi, Danladi-Maigoro said that the Speaker, House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, sponsored the farmers from three local governments in the constituency. Danladi-Maigoro, the immediate past chairman of Dass Local Government Council, said that the farmers were selected from Dass, Tafawa Balewa and Bogoro Local Government areas. He said that the farmers were trained at the College of Horticulture, Dadin-Kowa, in Gombe State in dry season farming and other related irrigation agricultural techniques. Danladi-Maigoro said that the farmers would be assisted with farm inputs and other equipment to enable them to embrace dry season farming. He said that the speaker also appointed 20 people in Das...