The federal government has disclosed plans to increase the amount of land available for farming on vacant acres of Federal Tertiary institutions in an effort to increase the nation’s food supply.
This was said by Senator Abubakar Kyari, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church’s Centennial Public Lecture and Food Summit on Friday in Port Harcourt. The theme of the event was “Ending Food Shortage in Nigeria, How to Apply The Surplus Concept.”
Kyari, who was accompanied by Nuhu Kilishi, the ministry’s deputy director for nutrition and food safety, stated that letters asking for the institutions’ permission had already been issued.
He revealed that certain Universities have already started reacting positively, stating the action would be a guaranteed step to resuscitate farming in schools.
Kyari stated, “We want to revive farming in the schools and institutions. We have written to the universities and schools for them to let us utilise hectares of their land that are unused.
“They have started responding, by the time we have a reasonable level of compliance, there is going to be a programme that would ensure that those empty lands are being used for cultivation and this will add to food availability.”
Noting that the Federal Government would give farmers solar-powered irrigation pumps in an effort to lower cultivation costs, he counseled farmers to look into the possibilities of processing agricultural produce in order to maximize profit rather than stopping at producing food.
“Farmers need to use irrigation pumps, so the ministry is intending to buy solar pumps for farmers to cut costs for them. Instead of using petrol they would be using solar pumps.
“The Minister has rolled out immediate, short term, medium and long term plans that would address food shortage in Nigeria.
“I will advise farmers that after producing don’t stop at production, go into processing, value addition because it pays more to do that,” he said.
Prior to this, the event’s keynote speaker, Cyril Nwamguruka, a professor of plant breeding and genetics at Babcock University, named selfishness as the main cause of the nation’s food scarcity.
Nwamguruka urged President Bola Tinubu to fill public office with only selfless and devoted people.
He stated, “I am appealing to the President, he should also act beyond looking at people’s competence. He should look at their track record in terms of how fair, how sincere, how committed and how truthful they are in things they have handled in the past.
“Because selfishness is what is killing us, irrespective of the abundance of resources we have, some people want to have it to themselves. But if you have a moral compass that is guiding you, you will think beyond yourself.”
He further urged the government to invest in roads construction and security to boost food production and distribution across the country.
He added, ‘”The government should invest in ensuring that roads linking production centres to other centres because we encounter so many losses in conveying these goods. The government should invest in putting the roads in order.
“The government should invest in security, because we discover now that most of the farmers have abandoned the farm because there is no security.
“Most of the crops are run over by militia groups, so the government should invest in a formidable security network.”
