National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI), in conjunction with News Trust Investment Limited has trained 150 youths and women farmers on rice post-harvest handling and preservation in Niger State.
The move is to boost value chain initiative in rice production to meet local demand and add value to the local production for food security.
The executive director of the NCRI, Dr. Aliyu Umar, made this known shortly at a three-day training workshop on Grains Harvest, Handling, and Preservation for Rice Farmers yesterday in Bida.
He said the training was to equip the beneficiaries with skills to reduce rice post-harvest losses, saying that the programme was part of the institute’s empowerment of rice farmers to attain national food self-sufficiency.
“This project is one of the projects under the 2022 appropriation and bankrolled by the federal government, over 150 youths and women are benefitting from this gesture. They will be imparted with skills on rice post-harvest handling, preservation, and storage and this is to reduce the huge losses that accompany rice production,” he said.
“I want to call on the beneficiaries to consider themselves lucky to be selected for this laudable project, they should take the training seriously so that they will turn their fortunes for good,” he added.
Umar commended the federal government for prioritising the agricultural sector to boost food production and socio-economic development of the country.
He called on the beneficiaries to take the training with all seriousness in their interest and for the overall development of the country even as he called on Nigerians to embrace rice production, especially dry season rice farming, considering its importance to the human and socio-economic development of the country.
