We have three ways to revive agriculture in Nigeria – Minister

Chief Audu Ogbeh, Minister Of Agriculture and Rural Development, has revealed the three ways through which the Muhammadu Buhari government will revive the agricultural sector and make it become a major natonal revenue earner. These are through self sufficiency in local staples, enhanced agricultural production for exports and certification, quality control and packaging.
He said this when he gave a keynote address at The Third Ogun State Investors Forum, held in Abeokuta, Ogun State, On Wednesday, 10th May, 2016.
On the three-prong actions, he said: “We shall build zonal capabilities and comparative advantages in each geo-political zone of the country to ensure that each part of the country engages in the cultivation of crops and tendering of animals that are best suited to its peculiar circumstances.”
The first priority, according to him, is the achievement of self-sufficiency, and excess, in our local staples namely: cassava, rice, maize, sorghum, millet, wheat, fruits and vegetables, poultry, honey, sugar, beans, soya, oil-palm, fish, milk, vegetable oils.
“Through the cooperative efforts of all key stakeholders in the agricultural sector that we expect to key into this vision and help us to actualize it, we are confident that over the next four years, the huge import bill that we are incurring presently should gradually be a thing of the past while we conserve foreign exchange for deployment to areas of strategic importance, and improve on our employment generation capacity”
The second issue of concern, in the words of Ogbeh, is enhanced agro production for export in the areas of our comparative advantage namely: Cocoa, Coffee, Kolanut, Cotton, Cashew, Tea, Sesame, Soya, Fruits & Vegetables, Banana, Onions, Pineapples, Ogbono, Gum Arabic.
He maintained: “We can all recall that at independence, Nigeria was a world-leading exporter of many cash crops including groundnut, palm oil, cocoa and cotton till the subsequent period of petroleum resource dominance that overshadowed the agricultural sector for many decades. The South Western geo-political zone of the country, of which Ogun State is a key member, financed most of its development programmes with earnings from the agricultural sector which made it a pace setter in many areas of human endeavour in the country. We urgently need to recover lost grounds in these areas given the realization that we controlled a sizeable share of the global market for these crops in the past.”
The third priority, according to him, is addressing meaningfully and decisively the topical issues of certification, quality control and packaging, “which have either led to under-pricing, or rejection of some of our agricultural exports in time past.”
He added that part of it entails replacing the use of polypropylene bags with jute bags for packaging.
“This, hopefully, should lead to the creation of thousands of on-farm jobs through the production of Kernaf as raw materials for making jute bags,. This is a huge window of opportunity for inflow of investment. We are mindful that the good practice, world-wide, now is not to export produce except in carbon-free packaging items, hence we are determined to ensure that our agricultural products increasingly pass the certification, quality control and packaging tests to enable our farmers have adequate returns on their harvests and assure us of regular inflow of additional income streams in foreign exchange to facilitate our economic recovery,” he added.