The Federal Government has hinted of its current moves to create a web application for the training of farmers on modern farming practices as a strategic option of enhancing the sector’s productivity and ensuring food security in the country.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Aliyu Sabu Abdullahi, made this disclosure on Monday when he featured on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily programme.
The minister, who spoke on the plan while reacting to questions relating to the training of farmers through extension services to improve their farming skills, attributed the move primarily to the low ratio of farmers to extension workers in the country.
He clarified: “We also realized that the ratio of extension workers to farmers is still something that many extension workers will not have the required information. Right now, we are currently working on an E-extension Programme.
“We are going to develop an app to be translated into the major languages so that will be able to access the information to guide their operations”, Abdullahi added.
While expressing optimism that the surging commodity prices, especially food items’, will soon begin to drop based on the current measures of the government, he explained that over the years Nigeria had historically relied more of rainy season farming to boost agricultural outputs but still stressed the need to explore the opportunities of dry season farming too.
Commenting on the latest policy measure of the government to allow tariff-free importation of some food items to the country over the next 150 days, the minister described the fiscal measure as a short-term strategy to augment food supply and projected that prices of food items would decline in the immediate future.
Nigeria is currently facing one of the worst food insecurity situations over the past decades due to insecurity in the farmlands across the six geopolitical zones in the country as well as the lingering implications of the fuel subsidy removal by the President Bola Tinubu’s administration about a year ago.
The latest Food inflation rate published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) today reflected that the Food inflation rate surged to 40.87% year-on-year in June this year, representing 15.62% points higher compared to the 25.25% rate recorded in the corresponding period of last year.
The Bureau attributed the rise in the Food inflation rate year-on-year to increases in prices of Millet Whole grain, Garri, Guinea corn, etc (Bread and Cereals Class), Yam, Water Yam, Coco Yam (Potatoes, Yam & Other Tubers Class), Groundnut Oil, Palm Oil, etc (Oil & Fats Class) and Catfish Dried, Dried Fish-Sadine, Mudfish (Fish Class), etc.
It added that on a month-on-month basis, the Food inflation rate in the month under review increased to 2.55% which shows a 0.26% increase compared to the 2.28% rate recorded in May 2024, noting that the rise in Food inflation on a Month-On-Month basis was caused by the rise in the rate of increase in the average prices of Groundnut Oil, Palm Oil, etc (Oil & Fats Class), Water Yam, Coco Yam, Cassava, etc (Potatoes, Yam & Other Tubers Class), Tobacco, Catfish Fresh, Croaker, Mudfish Fresh, Snail, etc, (Fish Class).
The report also showed that the average annual rate of Food inflation for the 12-month period ending June 2024 over the previous 12-month average was 35.35%, representing 11.31% points higher than the average annual 24.03% rate of change recorded in June 2023.
