Governor Udom Emmanuel
Worried by the prevailing food crisis in Akwa Ibom State, the administration of Governor Udom Emmanuel, has intervened with the disbursement of more than N1.2 billion as interest free loans to about 2,000 cassava farmers.
The revolving loan, the administration explained, was targeted at curbing the monopoly of market unions in the pricing of foodstuffs in the state.
This is even as checks revealed that government’s drive towards food sufficiency is hampered by the low capacity utilisation of its multi faceted cassava processing mills and lack of commitment from beneficiaries of government agricultural loans.
The state Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr Glory Edet, who spoke to journalists on the sustainability of the state government’s subsidised sales of garri, said the loan scheme was a deliberate move to reduce the astronomical price of garri, a staple food in the state, by boosting the production capacity of cassava farmers.
Edet pointed out that the initiative was not limited to increased cassava production, disclosing that 1,000 each of maize and vegetable farmers also benefitted from interest free loans even as the ministry distributed 700,000 cocoa seedlings to cocoa farmers and boosted livestock farmers with improved breeds of goats and other animals.
She explained that the present utilisation of the cassava mills is dependent on the quantity of cassava from its demonstration farms across the state, but added that government had in addition, acted as off checkers by buying from small holder cassava farmers to increase processing capacity and empower the farmers to sustain production.
The ministry, she said, had sustained the sale of more than 150 bags of 120kg bags of garri daily at a reduced price in different parts of the state to ameliorate the hardship on residents and force the stabilisation of the price of the commodity in the open market.
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