BREAKING NEWS, Business
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The Commercial Agriculture Development Project says that Lagos State produced 2,063 Metric tonnes of rice in six years
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Dec 14, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
THE Lagos State government produced more than 2,063 metric tonnes of rice in the last six years (2009 – 2015), according to the report by the Commercial Agriculture Development Project, CADP. Kehinde Ogunyinka, state project coordinator, CADP, who presented the report in Lagos at the second post-restructured CADP implementation support mission to the State, said that a total of 7,288 metric tonnes of smoked fish was exported to other countries during the period under review.
According to Ogunyinka, progress has been made in the project’s collaboration with the National Food and Drugs Administration Control for the certification of rice processing centre in Itokin, as well as the Industrial and General Insurance Plc’s coverage for agriculture products.
However, Ogunyinka said the Avian Influenza outbreak in December 2014 had affected the output from the poultry in the state and a sum of N7.44million was given to farmers affected by the outbreak. He explained that a total of N3.55billion ($18million) had been disbursed since the commencement of the project till date, leaving N1.44billion ($7.31) undisbursed funds from the World Bank grant.
Highlighting other achievements of the project, he said, “About 3,548 beneficiaries including 55 women and youths; and additional 249 commodity interest groups and entrepreneurs, under the business alliance arrangement, had been supported. “77,000 had benefitted indirectly mainly through capacity building, rural intervention and infrastructure, among others. As a result of the project intervention in the state, over 6,000 jobs had been created directly with over 12,000 indirect jobs since the inception to date. As a result of the market linkages facilitated by the project 6540kg of paddy rice, 1343 broilers, 3120 cockerels and 4212 trays of eggs, among others were sold,” Ogunyinka stated.
According to him, the project rehabilitated 16 farm access roads and provided transformers, extension lines and accessories in 10 locations across the state. “Fish production, juvenile production, smoked fish and fish feed increased by 59.51 percent, 13.81 percent, 35.44 percent and 100 percent, respectively.”
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the country plans to attain rice sufficiency in the next 24 months and called for market guarantees for farm produce, in a policy document for the agricultural sector.
The United States Department of Agriculture figures put the volume of rice produced in the country in the previous year at three million tonnes. The Chairman of the Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria, Vicky Haastrup, was reported to have put the production capacity of rice in the country at 30 percent. She recently said, “It is a fact that local production cannot match local demand, which creates a recipe for smuggling.”
For the poultry, the report showed that the quantity of eggs produced increased by 21.5 percent from the baseline period and the volume of sales and yield followed the same trend.
The CADP project funded by World Bank is aimed at strengthening Nigeria’s agricultural production systems and facilitating access to the market for targeted value chains among small and medium-scale commercial farmers in Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Enugu, and Cross River states.
As stated in the World Banks’ implementation report in June this year, four commodity interest groups received approval to export branded smocked fish to the United States market, after years of trying to sell agricultural products internationally. In addition, One Rice CIG was able to export packaged Ofada rice to the United Kingdom and a farmers’ market in Maryland, the United States America.
The project, which will be rounded off in November 2016, is expected to facilitate agricultural production and access to market for the farmers in the poultry, aquaculture and rice value chain in Lagos State.
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