Dry season farming’ll be intensified to tackle food insecurity – FG

Minister of Agriculture, Muhammad Abubakar, has stated that Nigeria will go into intensive dry-season farming beginning from December, to ensure food security in the country. 

The minister said this on Thursday  when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture Colleges, Research Institutes and Universities to defend the 2023 budget of the ministry.

According to him, the Ministry was already discussing going into intensive dry season farming to ensure food security in the country, saying food security is everything else before other security. 

“There is slight price 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”, he said.

Chairman of the Committee, Munir Danagundi, said records available to the committee indicated that budget releases in 2021 and 2022 had been very impressive.

He streased that majority of the research institutes and Universitiersities had satisfactorily utilised the funds allocated and released by government, while commending their effort for the achievement despite some challenges.

“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 CEO where some inadequacies and flaws associated with procurement were observed,” he said.