FG ’ll upgrade all Agro services centers facilities ―FCT Minister

MINISTER of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, on Wednesday, assured farmers that the Federal Government would upgrade facilities at the 11 Agro services centres across the six area councils so as to revitalize the agricultural sector in the territory.

He gave this assurance in his keynote address during the flagging-off of the 2017 sales of subsidized agricultural inputs to farmers at the Agriculture and Rural Development Secretariat’s central store, Gwagwalada, Abuja.

Malam Bello, who stressed that the government was aware of numerous challenges the rural farmers were facing to get their farm inputs, added that the government was putting necessary machinery in place to ensure that required agro inputs were available and accessible to farmers on time and at affordable prices.

The minister said the essence of the exercise was to provide support for the FCT farmers through provision of critical agricultural inputs in order to improve food production and income to the farmers, pointing out that the FCT administration has procured enough inputs for all year round farming activities.

Each beneficiary, according to him, would buy the various inputs such as water pump, sprayer and agro chemicals, at 50 percent subsidized price.

He then urged the smallholder farmers, farmers’ group and cooperative societies to embrace the gesture of the government to buy and make judicious use of the inputs and shun the habit of reselling the products to middlemen.

Malam Bello said the FCT administration was determined to improve the agricultural productivity of farmers by giving incentives and implementing projects and programmes aimed at making agriculture profitable and attractive to the youths.

“farmers groups and cooperatives societies should take maximum advantage of other agricultural programmes of FCT geared towards increasing agricultural productivity such as Agric Land Development programme in Kwali Area Council, subsidized tractors and implements to farmers groups and individual cooperate farms and back to land programme targeted at providing jobs for interested youths and women”, he added.

Earlier, the acting secretary of ARDS, Dr Musa Aliyu, said agriculture was the most dominant economic activity of the rural population of the FCT with over 150, 000 farming families who were involved in small scale farming.

Dr Aliyu, who, therefore, said the gesture of the government was a welcome relief to the FCT farmers since it would effectively reduce the cost of production and as well as increase their crop yield, said the farmers were expected to purchase their agro inputs at 50 percent discount at any of the centres closer to their farms.