The Nigerian government plans to deploy forest rangers to protect farmlands across the country. The government has also restocked the Strategic National Food Reserve with 200,000MT of commodities.
This was disclosed on Tuesday during a conference by Nigeria’s agriculture minister, Dr. Mohammad Abubakar while discussing the impact of flooding on Nigeria’s food security.
He noted that to protect Nigeria’s food production from insecurity, the FG plans to deploy agro-rangers nationwide.
The government’s effort to increase food production: The minister stated that the deployment of the agro-rangers was part of ongoing activities by the ministry with relevant government agencies to increase food production in the country.
- He said, “The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is collaborating with the Ministry of Interior to improve security on farms through the deployment of agro-rangers across the country.”
He added that the federal government had also restocked the Strategic Food Reserve with 200,000MT (metric tonnes) of assorted food, adding that they are also constructing and rehabilitating mini-earth dams and water, harvesting structures to store excess rainwater for dry season farming and fisheries in the front-line states.
- “This will increase water availability for domestic and agricultural use. It will equally reduce the negative impact of climate change, mitigate farmer-harder conflict and increase food production in the country.
- “Also the government is training pastoralists within grazing reserves to adopt good animal husbandry practices for increased production and reduction in crop farmer and herder conflicts. there has been an approval of five years tax break as an incentive to encourage private investments in the agricultural sector and increased food production, processing, and marketing,” he said.
To tackle food prices and inflation, he added that the FG is looking at other areas where we can import the things that we need.
- “A country, no matter how agriculture sufficient it is, will still import. Even America, which is the giant of agriculture, still imports certain things,” he added.
Declining food production: Nairametrics reported in August that the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) warned about the declining rate of food cultivation by crop farmers due to insecurity.
The NESG added that Nigeria suffers a huge supply-demand gap across all food crops, adding that Nigeria is not producing enough to meet local demand.
