The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, has attributed the current acute food shortage in the country to seasonal effects, reduced landmass, flooding, and other factors.
He, however, assured Nigerians to expect a bumper harvest before the year-end.
Food inflation has reached 40 percent according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), pushing the prices of essential commodities beyond the reach of millions of Nigerians.
Speaking on Channel Television’s Sunday Politics, Kyari also mentioned that the Federal Government has implemented measures to address the situation, including scaling up farming to increase food production.
“The season we have here is a critical issue we have in agriculture. This is what we call the lean season and this is between June-July and the next harvest,” the minister said.
“The shrinkage of land mass for agric, flooding, habitation problems, and insecurity…An aging farming population; younger people are not going into agriculture now.’’ He added.
He said the government is further ramping up moves for mechanised farming with the distribution of fertilizers to farmers and efforts to purchase tractors.
“We have ordered. It’s not like chewing gum; you can’t buy it off the shelf. I went to Belarus and ordered 200 tractors and 9,000 other implements,” the minister said on the current affairs show.
“The basic implement for farming in Nigeria is a hoe, which is archaic and antique. That’s why we are talking mechanisation,” said Kyari.
Assuring Nigerians on bumper harvest, he said, “It [bumper harvest] is about October-November this year. That’s when we are going to have the harvest. We are expecting a bumper harvest barring any natural issues.
“Well, I am just assuring you that we will have a bumper harvest.’’
