Post by Ismail AbdulAzeez on Jun 23, 2013 4:17:01 GMT 1
The minister of agriculture and rural development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina has said that Nigeria will save N431billion while meeting 68 per cent of the nation’s wheat needs by 2015.
This is even as federal government scales up activity to stop the importation of wheat so as to create market for local farmers.
The minister revealed this during the inaugural meeting of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NAG) in Abuja at the weekend.
He said, “the efforts of government towards encouraging the substitution of wheat with high quality cassava flour is already yielding positive results as the wheat imports to Nigeria declined from an all-time high of 4,051,000 MT in 2010 to 3,700,000 MT in 2012.”
The minister said, “As we implement accelerated cassava flour production, with the installation of the industrial scale cassava flour plants, expand cassava production and deploy hundreds of compact modular milling systems, Nigeria’s dependency on imported wheat will decline even further.”
Dr Adesina said that government was looking into the local production of wheat in the Northern part of Nigeria and informed members of the group that the Lake Chad Research Institute of Nigeria had released new high yielding tropical and heat tolerant wheat varieties that can yield up to 6 tons per hectare. This, according to him, “is about four times the yield of temperate wheat varieties used in Nigeria during the effort to produce wheat in the 1980s”.
He further explained that with the tropical wheat varieties that are presently available in the country and at the high yields being obtained, it is profitable and economically-viable to produce wheat in Nigeria.
The minister explained that 21,000 MT was harvested in 2012, from the new varieties, which according to him, would be used as seeds. The target, he said, was to plant 212,000 hectares of wheat by 2014, with expected production of over 1 million MT and a projection to expand the cultivated area to 215,000 hectares by 2015, with an anticipated production of 1.2 million MT. “So, in two years, if we accelerate investment, we should be able to produce 2.2 million MT of wheat. This would meet 68 per cent of our domestic wheat requirements and save Nigeria N431 Billion in wheat imports annually.”
Source: leadership.ng/news/040613/nigeria-save-n431bn-wheat-import-2015#sthash.fBbUoQTD.dpuf
This is even as federal government scales up activity to stop the importation of wheat so as to create market for local farmers.
The minister revealed this during the inaugural meeting of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NAG) in Abuja at the weekend.
He said, “the efforts of government towards encouraging the substitution of wheat with high quality cassava flour is already yielding positive results as the wheat imports to Nigeria declined from an all-time high of 4,051,000 MT in 2010 to 3,700,000 MT in 2012.”
The minister said, “As we implement accelerated cassava flour production, with the installation of the industrial scale cassava flour plants, expand cassava production and deploy hundreds of compact modular milling systems, Nigeria’s dependency on imported wheat will decline even further.”
Dr Adesina said that government was looking into the local production of wheat in the Northern part of Nigeria and informed members of the group that the Lake Chad Research Institute of Nigeria had released new high yielding tropical and heat tolerant wheat varieties that can yield up to 6 tons per hectare. This, according to him, “is about four times the yield of temperate wheat varieties used in Nigeria during the effort to produce wheat in the 1980s”.
He further explained that with the tropical wheat varieties that are presently available in the country and at the high yields being obtained, it is profitable and economically-viable to produce wheat in Nigeria.
The minister explained that 21,000 MT was harvested in 2012, from the new varieties, which according to him, would be used as seeds. The target, he said, was to plant 212,000 hectares of wheat by 2014, with expected production of over 1 million MT and a projection to expand the cultivated area to 215,000 hectares by 2015, with an anticipated production of 1.2 million MT. “So, in two years, if we accelerate investment, we should be able to produce 2.2 million MT of wheat. This would meet 68 per cent of our domestic wheat requirements and save Nigeria N431 Billion in wheat imports annually.”
Source: leadership.ng/news/040613/nigeria-save-n431bn-wheat-import-2015#sthash.fBbUoQTD.dpuf