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by Okechukwu Nnodim
Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina
The total gross revenue from the local production of rice in the past three years is N750bn, the Federal Government has said.
According to the government, farmers and
small-scale rice processors in the country made a net income of N407bn
as a result of the ongoing transformation in the rice sub-sector.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, who said this in a statement, also
noted that with the new drive in rice production and the amount of
arable land to cultivate the crop in the country, Nigeria had the
capacity to produce sufficient rice for its populace.
He said rice could be grown in all the
states in the country except one, adding that the economic impact of the
crop was enormous.
Adesina said, “When we started, only 10
states were growing rice; but now, 22 states are growing rice. The total
gross value of rice added to the domestic economy over the last three
years was about N750bn.
“So, you can see that we are creating
value to the domestic economy because we are engaging people to work. We
are also increasing the GDP of those states.”
The minister said the government had
increased the area of cultivation of rice by 1.9 million hectares,
adding that farmers in Nigeria were getting five to six tonnes per
hectare yield with the new variety of the produce introduced recently.
Adesina said rice importers were now
getting empty bags of imported rice and giving them to Nigerian rice
millers to fill them with local rice and sell the product at the cost of
the foreign product.
He said the recently introduced rice
policy, which raised tariff on imported rice, was done to give Nigerian
farmers a fighting chance to increase their production.
The agric minister said the policy, which
had since been relaxed, gave rise to the establishment of small scale
millers all over the country “and this has really increased production.”
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