By Dele Ogbodo/Victoria Onyisi in Abuja
With the dawn of wet season farming and as the rain approaches, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari has said the Ministry is set to receive over 500 tractors assembled by the John Deere Group.
While expressing excitement at the progress being made as game changer to overcome the scary and alarming food inflation, the Minister, said the machineries coming from the agricultural giant will no doubt improve mechanized farming, increase production, and achieve food and nutrition security.
The initiative he said is aimed at catalyzing farming activities and fortify the nation food and nutrition security in line with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s emergency declaration on food security.
The minister made this known during a media chat in his office recently.
He stated that John Deere would deliver 500 tractors by the end of May and the rest in September 2024.
He assured that the group will achieve the set target of 2,000 tractors yearly for the next five years as signed in Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry.
Kyari explained that to increase agricultural yields, there was a need for tractors, stressing that this was very important for growth in the agricultural sector.
The Minister reaffirmed the federal government’s commitment to improve food and nutrition security through mechanization, adding that the tractors would be accessible, available, and affordable for small, large-scale, and cooperative farmers across the country.
He also revealed that federal government had procured 58,500 tons of milled rice from Rice Millers Association of Nigeria for stabilization of the market force: “what we did not want to do, was to get to market and purchase food stuff, we have appealed to World Food Program (WFP), which is a United Nation’s based Agency, not to make bulk purchase from the market so as not to exacerbate the food price inflation that we have now’’, the minister added.
On the recently released fertilizer by the CBN to FMAFS, the Minister stated that the release of 2.15 million bags of assorted fertilizer ranging from NPK, UREA and SSP, worth over N100 billion by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Nigeria farmers was to enhance agricultural production.
He added that the apex Bank’s contribution would increase food production capabilities as well as encourage price stabilization in the agricultural sector.
He revealed that the ministry had received the handing over letter and would commence the distribution of the various assorted fertilizers as soon as locations where they are warehoused is made available to the ministry
He further assured that the donation would be judiciously utilized and delivered to the intended farmers: “as soon as we get the locations which I am sure is spread across the country, we will swing into action’’, the minister added.
