High cost of local rice very disturbing- Federal Government

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High cost of local rice very disturbing- Federal Government

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The federal government laments the high cost of local rice in the country, which it notes is now above the price of imported rice.At a Town Hall meeting in Abuja yesterday, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, in response to a question said the situation was disturbing, considering government’s efforts at encouraging local production of rice in the country. He added that the country has spent too much time talking about agriculture with very little positive outcome.“We have talked enough as a country on agriculture; we have lamented enough on agriculture. I do not want to be a prophet of doom. We have had workshops like this, seminars like this, where is the result?“I don’t want to hear what I heard last year or what I heard when the budget was being defended, I want to hear that we have taken so many tractors to Benue, or we have taken so many  shelling machines to Lagos, Abia, Sokoto, or Kogi. We want to see how many hatcheries we have got now for these poultry farmers-that is what we want to see. That is what we want to use to measure,” he stressed.Ogbeh, however, said the reason why prices of the local rice was now above that of foreign rice was that most of the imported rice were from Vietnam, India and Thailand; thee countries subsidise the export of rice.According to him, the imported rice arrive at about N9, 000 per bag and were then sold at about N13,000 per bag to consumers unlike the local rice sold at about N16,000 per bag.The minister also lamented the interest rates for farming loans.“Our interest rates in this country are higher than the interest rate in most parts of the world.”˜’Another reason for the high cost of local rice is the price of diesel to run generators in the farms. Diesel went from N180 per litre to N300,” he said.The minister said that his next meeting with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo and Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun would have ”˜rice’ as an item on the agenda.As part of his effort to boost local rice production, Ogbeh said he had come up with an Anchor Borrowers Programme that supported the investment of billions of naira in assisting mainly local rice farmers.“In the next one month, you’ll have Nigerian rice  at the best price we’ve ever had,” the minister said.But Senator Abdullahi Adamu, senate committee chairman  on agriculture, who was apparently angry at the slow pace of progress in the sector, said that the 2017 planting season had already begun in most part of Nigeria, pointing out that what farmers needed was something tangible not promises.“I said so because I am pained. I am part of this government. We know what monies we voted for, we know under what headings we voted money for,” stressing that with the commitment of this government, one would have expected farmers to go back cheering.He noted that before the federal government took over the ministry of agriculture, the country had regional ministries of agriculture that were doing better.“We did make progress with agriculture. Everything we are saying today, we have done it yesterday. Every promise we are making today, it was implemented with result yesterday.”“I know this government means business wanting to reposition agriculture to the front banner so that we can be self-sufficient, so that the economy will be diversified. This cannot be achieved with this attitude to programmes of government,”Adamu said.Also, rice farmers are lamenting high cost of rice production, saying the situation may adversely affect Federal Government’s plans to ensure self-sufficiency in rice production.A rice farmer in Rivers, Mrs Ann Amos, told newsmen in Port Harcourt that the cost of the required inputs for rice farming had doubled.She said that she hired a land harrowing machine from the state Ministry of Agriculture to plow her 12-hectre farm at the cost of N35, 000.Besides, Amos said, a litre of herbicide (chemical) now cost N5, 000, from  N3,500 last year.She said that her rice farm, which she cultivated two months ago, was now due for spraying, but the herbicide was not available in Rivers.Amos said that her enquiries revealed that the price of a litre of the herbicide in Ebonyi was N5, 000, adding that weeds had somewhat overtaken the farm.She estimated that N60,000 would not be enough to spray the farm, excluding the cost of labour.She, nonetheless, noted that the use of herbicide would be more cost-effective than manual weeding of the farm.Amos said the cost of engaging a labourer for the manual weeding of the farm was between N2,000 and N2,500 per day, while it was between N1,500 and N2,000 in 2016 farming season.The National Secretary and Vice President, South- West zone of the Rice farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) outlined some of the reasons Nigerian local rice is expensive to include the activities of the millers, whom  he said mopped up the rice farmers produced and kept them in warehouses, creating  scarcity and hikes in the prices.They concentrate more in bringing in semi -processed (par boiled) rice using high-grade machines from those countries to de-husk it and sell cheaper whereas the local ones has to be parboiled and this is what is making the local rice unavailable and expensive, he said.“Even the rice that CBN gave farmers money to produce, the apex bank has been going around asking farmers where they kept the rice. Because the millers mopped up those rice and kept them in stores. And the few ones left in the market are now becoming more expensive,” he said.Other challenges affecting production, according to him, include lack of farm machine and processing plants to produce the quality rice that compete with imported ones.The RIFAN secretary who lamented that quality seeds, fertilizer and agro-chemicals remain a major challenge for the farmers, also said the CBN’s loan is not going round to all the farmers, saying the situation will also affect general production.The federal government, according to Ogbeh,  is working towards blocking wastages, increase GDP and embark on single window project execution.The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has said the country has engaged Brazilian scientists to produce new breeds of cows.Chief Ogbeh stated this yesterday in Abuja at the town Hall Meeting, where all the ministers presented their scorecard of their ministry’s achievements.“We are bringing Brazilian and Nigerian scientists to begin to improve the breed of cattle. We have the lowest yield of milk per cow in the world less than two bottles. In the rest of Africa, they do fifteen litres per day; in Europe is 50 litres per cow,” the minister said.The reason the minister gave for this poor milk production was that cows don’t like walking.He said if the country must stop spending $1 billion yearly on milk importation, the country needs to improve the breed of cows through Artificial Inseminations (AI).He said the farmers can earn more than a hundred thousand a month if the cows eat the right kind of grass, i.e., for any farmer that keeps about 5 cows with the production of 25 litres of milk per day.

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