Audu Ogbeh. Photo: NAN
The Federal Government of Nigeria is working to transform its agricultural sector to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty and hunger, attain food security and improve nutrition to promote sustainable agriculture.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, made this known at the opening ceremony of a three-day Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project conference held in Abuja from 14th- 16th August, 2018.
The minister gave assurance that the agricultural policy thrust of the present administration was committed to seeing agriculture run as a business, with plans in place to return the nation to an agro-economy footing that was abandoned with the discovery of oil.
Nigeria, he noted, was bouncing back as it had achieved feats in sesame seeds, cotton, sorghum, gum Arabic, maize, yam, cassava and rice production.
He mentioned that a large number of the smallholder farmers form the extreme poor and as such, the Federal Government was putting in place a number of initiatives to tackle poverty and hunger through boosting agricultural productivity, food production and improve rural incomes.
Ogbeh listed a number of obstacles hampering the growth of the agricultural sector to include lack of utilisation of science and technology in farming practices; unfriendly land policy; poor access to credits; lack of extension workers; poor soiltesting facilities; unprofitable planting habits and paucity of tractors for modernised farming.