Rice farmers in Nigeria have promised that the country will produce double its usual production in 2017

- They blamed saboteurs for the hike in the price of rice

- They also vowed to support the government's diversification plan

Rice farmers in Nigeria have revealed that the price of rice will go down in 2017 and promised to work with the federal government to help with the diversification project.

Mr Aminu Goronyo who is the national president of Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) gave this assurance on Monday, December 5.


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Goronyo revealed that the association had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with some farm input suppliers in the country to so that supply of cheap fertilisers and pesticides to boost production.

He explained that some saboteurs were behind the hike in the price of rice so as to make the government of President Muhammadu Buhari difficult.

He said: “We are going to assist the FG to produce more than enough rice for this country in 2017.

“It is part of the plan that we must bring down the price of rice in this country

“There are several efforts that we are making to see that in no distant time, this price of rice will come down for Nigerians to have access to affordable milled rice.”

Gonroya said the association was working on mapping and registering rice farmers across the country and that this would help provide lad to rice farmers.

The president of the association promised that by 2017, the production of rice will double the seven million tonnes produced this year.

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He said: “We have more than 4.5 million hectares of FADAMA land for rice production and each hectare has the capacity with a very good practice and management to produce five tonnes per hectare minimum.

“So, in one production cycle, we can produce 10 million metric tonnes of paddy rice and our consumption rate in this country is between 6.5 and seven million metric tonnes per annum.

“So if we can produce 10 million metric tonnes in one production cycle and we have three production cycles in a year, it means that we can feed this country and even export this rice that we produce.”

Even if they do their best to increase production, this government will do its best to increase its cost. We are here to make Nigerians suffer.

goog good good but let's produce enough to feed our selves before producing for exports

Good development

Jafar1:
goog good good but let's produce enough to feed our selves before producing for exports

What happened to building storages? Government buying and keep for raining days. We need rice that can sustain us gle 5 years in storage before we should start thinking of exporting