Nigerian Rice Farmers Claim Rice Will Be Cheaper In 2017

Nigerian Rice Farmers recently revealed that the high cost of rice won't continue in 2017 and also promised to support the federal government in a bid to diversify.

The national president of rice farmers of Nigeria (RIFAN), Mr Aminu Goronyo gave the assurance on Monday, December 5.

Goronyo said that the association had signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) with some farm input suppliers in the country so as to supply of cheap and quality fertilisers and pesticides to improve production.

He explained that some saboteurs were behind the abnormal increase in the price of rice so as to frustrate the  President Muhammadu Buhari led administration.

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

“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 claimed the association was working on selecting and registering rice farmers all over the country and that this would help provide land to rice farmers.

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

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.”