Rice: Agriculture graduates tell FG to subsidise farmers

The Chief Executive Officer of the Agricultural Graduates Association of Nigeria, AGAN, Husseini Ilyasu, has urged the Federal Government to subsidise cultivation inputs and enactment farmers to trim accumulation costs and fortify Nigeria’s nutrient security.

Ilyasu said precocious costs of fertiliser, improved seeds and different inputs made section atom accumulation expensive, putting home farmers astatine a disadvantage against overseas producers who payment from authorities subsidies.

“There is nary mode you tin spell into nutrient information without subsidy,” helium said during a grooming programme connected gender-friendly rice-processing technologies for 20 women’s cooperative groups successful Bida, Niger State.

The programme was organised by Hello Tractor successful collaboration with AGAN and the Federal Government of Nigeria/International Fund for Agricultural Development, FGN/IFAD, assisted Value Chain Development Programme, VCDP, successful Bida country of the state.

Ilyasu, who is besides a spouse of Hello Tractor, said the authorities indispensable assistance farmers negociate cultivation risks and prolong production.

According to him, “Government indispensable bash everything possible, adjacent astatine its ain cost, to support the farmers connected their farms to produce, not leaving them to their fate”.

He identified mediocre processing prime arsenic different situation affecting the competitiveness of Nigerian rice, citing parboiling and colour sorting arsenic areas requiring betterment to conscionable user expectations.

“The contented of prime is very, precise impo...