FG to partner private investors on farm irrigation

FEDERAL Government has indicated interest to partner with private investors in the area of irrigation in order to achieve food sufficiency in Nigeria.

The Minister of State, Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, disclosed this when he received a delegation of Future Pump Limited, led by the Managing Director, EuroBase Ltd, Mr. Don Ekesiobi yesterday in Abuja.

The Minister thanked the Company and EuroBase Consult Limited for indicating interest to partner with the Ministry in area of Agriculture, saying that, the Federal Government is very much interested in irrigation farming to boost food production in the country.

“The Federal Government would be interested in partnering with the company provided the solar pumping machine is durable, affordable knowing fully well that most of our farmers are subsistence and poor farmers”, the Minister stated.

The Managing Director, EuroBase Consult and leader of the delegation Mr. Don Ekesiobi in his remarks said the machine is environmental friendly with clean source of power, cost effective, durable and extremely rugged with almost zero maintenance and has a five- year warranty for the users.

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Mr. Don explained that with the technology, solar pumping machine would address the problem of   lack of access to energy that usually constrain farmers from irrigation facilities which are essential for agriculture.

In his contribution, the Managing Director of the Future Pump Company, Mr. Toby Hammond further explained that Future Pump is of two types which include SFI and SF2; he advised that the SF2 is more preferable because it is a robust surface pump designed to help smallholder farmers with shallow water sources pump up to 1 litre per second to water their crops using the power of the sun.

Mr. Hammond added that some of the benefits of using future pump for irrigation farming would include using of no fuel or electricity costs as well as robust and farmer-fixable, designed with easy maintenances and pump enough water for irrigation.