Food security: We are going into intensive dry season farming — Minister

The Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Muhammad Abubakar, on Thursday, disclosed that the nation would be embarking on intensive dry-season farming beginning next month in ensuring continuous production of food and food security in the country.

The minister said this in Abuja on Thursday when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture Colleges, Research Institutes and Universities to defend the 2023 budget.

He said the ministry was already discussing going into intensive drily season farming to ensure food security in the country.

According to him, “food security is everything else before other security without food, we will have issues. There is a slight elevation of commodities, which is a world phenomenon. But we are doing everything on our own to see what we can do to bring down the prices.”

He said that all necessary arrangements had been concluded towards ensuring successful implementation of the dry season farming.

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Earlier, the Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Munir Danagundi, said that records available to the committee indicated that the budget released in 2021 and 2022 had been very impressive.

He said that most of the research institutes and universities had satisfactorily utilized the funds allocated and released by the federal government while commending their effort for the achievement despite some challenges.

He said the committee was ever ready to assist the ministry to surmount any challenges that could arise in the implementation of the budget.

According to him, “We have intervened to solve problems associated with budget implementation in some agencies during our oversight visits to the agencies some weeks ago.

“The committee was generally impressed with the performance of the budget and has drawn the attention of some CEO where some inadequacies and flaws associated with procurement were observed.”

He said the attention of the committee was drawn to the protracted strike action by the three unions of the research institutes namely the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutes (ASURI).

Others include Senior Staff Association (SSA) and Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) which started in October 2021.

This according to him, means the staff have been on strike for 13 months and nobody has reported to the committee.

He said that the committee was curious to know how the affected agencies had been able to implement the budget alongside the strike.

“It is quite unfortunate that while the government is struggling to fully fund the budget including payment of salaries and allowances, staff are not appreciating the good gesture of the government,” he added.