SPECIAL Adviser to the Lagos State governor on Agriculture, Dr Oluwarotimi Fashola, has said that the huge population of the state provides a ready market for rice.
Fashola stated this during the training and empowerment programme organised by the Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture for 500 rice farmers across the state.
The governor’s aide said the development was aimed at standardising farming techniques and setting the pace for good quality rice production to compete with international value.
According to him, efforts must be intensified to discourage the importation of foreign rice so that locally produced rice can gain a good market share, saying the training process included production, processing and packaging of EKO OFADA Rice and EKO Rice.
Also, Fashola noted that the success of such a programme in the state led to the establishment of the first Integrated Rice Mill in South Western Nigeria at Imota with a production capacity of about 12,000 tonnes annually. He said, “The Imota Rice mill has two lines of 16 metric tonnes per hour, which after completion would produce about 2.4 million 50kg bags of Rice.
This will require about 200,000 tonnes of paddy which will be cultivated over 60,000Ha of Paddy field with single cropping. “This, therefore, calls for huge investment in paddy aggregation, rice production technology, extension services, land opening and mechanisation of the production processes as the Imota Rice mill has been planned to commence production by the end of the year.”
On her part, the Commissioner for Agriculture, Ms Abisola Olusanya, urged the beneficiaries to leverage the training for their economic development, noting that the Lagos State Government was ready to buy the paddy from them.
According to her, though the empowerment programme has not covered all rice farmers in the state, it will do a lot to assist the farmers on their various farms.
Meanwhile, beneficiaries were empowered with Knapsack Sprayers, Fertilisers and Faro 44 Rice Seedlings, among others.
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