By Dele Ogbodo
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, on Thursday, said that as part of measures to combat food inflation which is in direct response to President Bola Tinubu’s declaration of emergency on food security the Ministry will on Saturday flag off the 2023/2024 dry season farming.
Kyari, will lead several other dignitaries to Hadejia, Jigawa State, where the ceremony will take place.
The Technical Adviser on Strategic and Communications to the Minister, Mr. Kingsley Osadolor, quoted the Minister as saying that agricultural inputs, including seeds, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides, will be delivered to farmers at the occasion.
The Federal Government, the Minister added will be subsidizing the agricultural inputs by 50%.
The 2023/2024 dry season farming is being boosted by an African Development Bank (AfDB) facility and implemented under the National Agricultural Growth Scheme and Agro-Pocket (NAGS-AP) project.
The implementation, the Minister said will be ICT-driven with earlier steps taken to geo-locate farmlands, enumerate, register, and cluster no fewer than 250,000 farmers.
The dry season farming is expected to take place in all the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
One critical requirement among others is availability of irrigable land where the dry season farming will take place.
The crops being targeted for the 2023/24 season are wheat, for which seeds have been imported from Mexico; rice, maize, sorghum, soyabeans, and cassava.
Wheat farmers have been guaranteed off-take of their produce by the Flour Millers Association of Nigeria.
The Minister described the flag-off as a milestone in realizing the Renewed Hope Agenda.
According to him, the availability of agricultural inputs and machinery will enhance the cultivation of about one hundred and twenty thousand hectares in different parts of the country.