Adamawa State Governor Murtala Nyako has revealed that the mango section of his Sebore Farms has the capacity to generate N3.5bn annually.

Nyako, who spoke while addressing farmers at the Yola South Farming Skills Acquisition Centre on Sunday, said the 50,000 mango trees in his farm has the capacity to annually produce 10,000 tonnes of mangoes representing 200kg of mango per tree, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.

“If you make juice with 10,000 tonnes of mangoes at the present price of juice in the market, you will get about N5bn, while all it would cost you to process the juice won’t be more than N1.5bn.

“That is, I will be taking home N3.5bn annually, all things being equal. This is excluding earnings from my dairy and fish farm,” Nyako said.

The governor said he used his farm as an example to underscore the importance of commercial farming, adding that the establishment of agricultural skill acquisition centres in the 21 local government areas of the state was to reinforce the need for commercial farming.

The centres, he said, were designed to train rural farmers on modern farming techniques.

Due to the adoption of modern farming methods, farmers in other countries usually harvested 180 tonnes of maize on the same farm size where Nigerian farmers realise six tonnes of maize, he added.

“Where your dairy cow gives you 150 litres of milk, I want to tell you that in another part of the world a cow gives 15,000 litres within the same period.

“The area where you now get six tonnes of onion, I want to tell you that for the past 15 years in Yemen, your colleagues have been getting 120 tonnes,” the governor said.

He expressed worry over the country’s population growth rate, saying that it might double in the next 25 years.

“The population is growing while the land is not growing but rather decreasing due to desert encroachment. We must do something about our food security,” Nyako said.

He described the recurring problem of sectional crisis in the country as a manifestation of poverty caused by hunger and malnutrition.

According to him, the absence of balanced diet in many youths has caused a deficiency in the growth and development of their intelligence quotient, leading them into negative thinking and violent tendencies.

“Research has shown that any child that is not given balanced diet before the age of six will lose 30 per cent of his IQ; and if he grows up that way, he will always find things difficult to understand.

“You now see a young man shorter than his father; you also see a 70-year-old man reading without his glasses but his son that is not up to 40 years needs glasses to read,” Nyako noted.


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