The agricultural sector got a boost of ₦309billion in the past one year.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, disclosed this at the ministerial briefing in Abuja while speaking on achievements made in the agriculture sector since Tinubu assumed office on May 29, 2023.
Nigeria is currently working in partnership with Brazil to provide mechanisation tools worth ₦1.6 billion to be added to the available machine.
The harvest corps led to injection of the amount to the economy.
Speaking on the activities of the agriculture ministry on Monday, Kyari said the Federal Government launched the dry season farming programme with the cultivation of 118,657 hectares of wheat in 15 states in the acceleration of all-year-round farming.
“The ministry supported 107,429 wheat farmers with inputs resulting in output of 474,628 metric tonnes. The estimated value of N309bn was injected into the economy. The support that was given, as we all know, was a 50 per cent subsidy on all inputs including fertilisers, agrochemicals, that is herbicides and insecticides, as well as seeds, and this was free of charge.
“We also imported 6,750 seeds, tonnes of wheat from Mexico, and also got about 5,500 seeds procured and sourced locally. The harvest that we have realised would have an estimated value of about N309bn that is injected into the economy,” Kyari stated.
The minister stated that in response to a presidential directive, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security released 42,000 metric tonnes of assorted food commodities from the Federal Government’s strategic grain reserves to the National Emergency Management Agency for distribution to Nigerians.
We procured and distributed to all states and the Federal Capital Territory 58,500 metric tonnes of milled rice to dampen escalating prices. There is the fortification of crops with Vitamin A micro-nutrient to enrich nutrition content and health value of food commodities,” he stated.
Kyari added, “In response to persistent food inflation, the following measures were undertaken to boost production.”
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