From John Adeleye
The Federal Government has disclosed plans to increase the amount of land available for farming by farming on vacant acres of lands of postsecondary educational institutions, so as to increase the nation’s food supply.
Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari stated this at the weekend in Port Harcourt at Seventh-Day Adventist Church’s Centennial Public Lecture and Food Summit.
The theme of the event was “Ending food shortage in Nigeria: How to apply the surplus concept.”
The ministry’s deputy director for nutrition and food safety, Nuhu Kilishi, who represented Kyari, stated that letters asking for the institutions’ permission had already been submitted.
He said that several Tertiary institutions have already started to react positively, stating that the initiative will undoubtedly be a step toward bringing farming back into the classroom.
Kyari said: “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.”
“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.
