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| Audu Ogbeh, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development |
The Minister of
Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, has said that the incessant
clashes between farmers and cattle herdsmen in the country would be brought to
an end in the next two years. Mr. Ogbeh said on Tuesday that the federal
government would create grazing areas in the country where the herdsmen would
take care of their cattle.
Media report continues:
“We
will grow grass in the South to feed the cattle in the North, just as Saudi Arabia
did,” he said.
According
to the minister, if Saudi Arabia with the largest cattle ranch in the world can
grow its grass for the cows in the United States of America, Nigeria should be
able to do same.
Mr.
Ogbeh said the government would lobby banks to peg interest rate at five per
cent instead of the current nine per cent.
He
made this known in Ilorin at the launching of the 2nd phase of Agricultural
Equipment Hiring Enterprise (AEHE) programme at the National Centre for
Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM).
The
minister said nine per cent was too high as interest rate for farmers, adding
that for people of Nigeria to feed well, agriculture must grow.
“So
interest rate has to come down, if this is done, banks will have more loans to
give and more farmers will be taking the loan because of the low rate,” Mr.
Ogbe said.
The
minister said he would soon come out with a road map for the ministry, adding
that the ministry would come up with soil map of the country.
With
this soil map, farmers would know the type of fertilizer suitable for his farm
and how to apply same for optimal yield.
He
said his ministry was targeting three million metric tons of cocoa and planned
to plant more castor trees, rice, sugar and wheat.
Mr.
Ogbe commended NCAM for its efforts in the mechanization of agriculture, adding
that no country can practice large scale agriculture without mechanization.
He
promised that the Federal Government would assist NCAM to improve on the
tractors it developed.
“We
cannot develop agriculture by distributing cutlasses and hoes to the farmers,
only one per cent of farms are produced by mechanized farming,” he said.
The
minister lamented that Nigeria has less than 300 tractors while the whole of
Europe and USA are completely mechanized.
Mr.
Ogbe said that from available statistics, there are 800 million hectares of
farm land in the world with 400 million of this from Africa.
He said Nigeria has 79 per
cent of farmland which translated to 92 sq km of land, adding that Nigeria is
wealthy as land is wealth everywhere.
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