Food Security: We Are ready For Dry Season Farming – Minister

In the bid to give agriculture the needed push to drive economic growth the minister of Agriculture, Dr Mohammed Abubakar, has said the country is going into intensive dry-season farming beginning from December, to make sure there is continuous production of food on the land.

The minister said this in Abuja yesterday 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 dry-season farming to ensure food security in the country.

According to him, food security is everything else before other security because, without food, there will be issues.

He said, “there is a slight elevation of commodities, that is a world phenomenon. But we are doing everything on our own to see what we can do to bring down the prices”.

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

He said most of the research institutes and universities had satisfactorily utilised the funds allocated and released by government, while commending their effort for the achievement in spite of some challenges.

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

“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 CEOs to some inadequacies and flaws associated with procurement observed,” he said.

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

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