The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Mohammad Abubakar has said strategic policies and programmes by the Federal government which sees agriculture as the alternative to oil have lifted 4.2 million Nigerians out of poverty in the last two years.
Abubakar stated this in Abuja at the 2021 World Food Day with the Theme: Our Actions are our Future: Better production, better nutrition, a better environment.
He noted that investment in agriculture can guarantee food security with the potential to be a major contributor to job creation and save foreign exchange required for food imports.
He pointed out that the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) and Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP) are known to be the most recent, while the development of a successor policy termed National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) covering 2021 – 2025 is now in progress.
He further said that ‘’ the ATA was built on the principle that agriculture is a serious business and should be supported.
Read Also; ‘African Agriculture will drive global food and protein security’
In the area of capacity building, he said about 2.2 million farmers, youth and women were trained and empowered on different agricultural value chains.
“The exercise is still ongoing. Our Ministerial mandate to train and deploy 75,000 Agriculture Extension workers has reach an advanced stage’’, he said.
To increase provision of protein and nutrition to Nigerians, 150 number of animals were inseminated and 10 of pasture plots were established, while a total of 352 crossbred cattles were generated and being utilised by pastoralists which would increase supply of meat to the population.
Abubakar added that the National Accelerated fish production programme a total of 783,102 metric tons of fish was cultivated via the exploration of marine resources in Deep Sea/Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the exploration of Inland water bodies by fish farmers and fishermen.
He however emphasized that the Ministry has supported the establishment of many value-addition processing companies under the Agro Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS) Programme.
“We now have an excess capacity in rice processing and the challenge is to increase paddy production and supply to the rice mills’’.
He assured that the Federal Government through the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) would address all the problems associated with our livestock production activities and guarantee adequate supply of quality meat for domestic consumption and export for foreign exchange earnings.