Big blow for Nigeria’s drive towards attaining self-sufficiency in rice production as rice import bill is expected to grow by 12 percent in 2018-19. With an estimated population of 200 million, Nigeria is the world’s largest importer of rice.
According to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USAD). Growing refugee crisis, conflicts, population growth and more people giving up traditional coarse grains in their meals in favour of rice are some of the reasons for the expected increase for rice importation into the country.
The report stated that Nigeria’s rice production, estimated at 3.7 million tonnes, is not keeping pace with demand as rice consumption is projected to increase by 4 percent to 6.7 million tonnes from the 6.4 million tonnes recorded in 2017-18.
Mohammed Sahabi, chairman of the rice farmers’ association in Kebbi, said, “We foresee a significant drop in rice production this year,”
“The amount of land allocated to rice in the Kebbi area has likely fallen by half this year from the 200,000 hectares (494,200 acres) cultivated in 2017. Other major producing states such as Kogi and Ebonyi are dealing with an increasing number of clashes between nomadic herders and farmers, which keep planters from tilling their land”
The federal government anchor borrowers’ programme with the broad objective to create economic linkage between smallholder farmers and reputable large-scale processors with a view to increasing agricultural output and significantly improving capacity utilization of processors is making some progress with rice farmers around the country commending the initiative.
However, the incessant farmer-herder clashes, especially in the rural northern region of the country where most of the rice farmings are doing have gone unabated even as President Buhari has said “the way this situation is now, we can only pray,” a statement that have outraged many.
Darius Ishaku, the governor Taraba state said that the country will save $8 billion annually spent on the importation of rice from other countries if there is peace between farmers and herdsmen in Taraba state.
“I told Mr President when he was here that I can feed the whole country with rice. The $8 billion we spend on importing rice will be saved. We have river Taraba, we have river Donga coupled with the fertile lands but then I can’t do this because my people are not at home and are killed for no reason”, he concluded
According recent report by Price water house Coopers (PwC) on rice production in Nigeria, mechanization rate in the country had remained low at 0.3 hp/ha, when compared to India’s 2.6hp/ha and China’s 8 hp/ha.
It said that the number of agricultural tractors in the country was about 22,000, relative to one million tractors in China and 2.5 million tractors in India. Low income, limited access to affordable financing and the lack of technical skills have limited the adoption of mechanization across the rice value chain
The report noted that if tangible efforts were made to increase the mechanization rate in Nigeria from 0.3hp/ha to 0.8hp/ha in the next five years, rice production in the country could be doubled to 7.2 million tonnes.
