In an effort to alleviate the nation’s food scarcity, which is driving up the price of food goods on the market, the government of Enugu State has given smallholder farmers in the state 102 solar-powered water pumping equipment to use for dry-season rice production.
State Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Patrick Ubru, said on Thursday that the multi-million naira farm implements were being distributed to the farmers in five local government areas—Isi-Uzo, Uzo-Uwani, Ezeagu, Aninri, and Nkanu East, with the aim of providing them with a cooperative advantage in the production of rice and maize. This was done in anticipation of the state’s first-ever start of the dry season farming.
In order to ensure that the state produces at least one million metric tons of maize, sorghum, and rice annually as well as five million metric tons of cassava, Ubru stated that his ministry has been given a mandate by the governor. To that end, “we are starting dry season farming from this year.”
He claimed that the goal of the distribution of solar-powered water pumping equipment and the impending arrival of numerous other farm implements was to help farmers increase the production of their produce.
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He claimed that Governor Peter Mbah had centered his administration’s efforts on agriculture. “The governor has often said in his platform that he wants to increase Enugu State’s GDP (gross domestic product) from 4.4 billion to 30 billion dollars, and a large portion of this activity will be reliant on and anchored on agriculture.
“He started by ensuring that he activate the relationship between our donor agencies – the World Bank and the likes of them and paid down all the counterpart funds that were needed even the once backdated for seven years.”
The Commissioner, however, noted that he work with most of the community interest group to create a baseline data for Enugu State in value chain by value chain, regretting that it is not encouraging that in Enugu State despite the vast expense of land “we can only identify 45,000 hectares of land cultivated with rice.”
Regarding the distribution of the products, he stated that “four local governments that have a cooperative advantage in rice production received them carefully and equally.” The local government areas that benefited are Isi-Uzo, Uzo-Uwani, Nkanu East, Aninri, and Ezeagu. In reality, we have a team in Owoh, Amankanu, and Idodo that is keeping an eye on their activities and also giving them tube wells because, with the assistance of the federal ministry of agriculture and food security, we have decided to designate that area as another rice belt.
“Before now their rice farming does not confirmed with the modern way of farming even their seeds. So we are going to give to them improved seedlings through our relationship with Agricultural Transformation Agenda Projects.”
