Leadership (Abuja)
Grace Azubuike
11 June 2008
Minister of State for Agriculture and Water Resources, Mallam Adamu Waziri, has said that getting agriculture going in Nigeria requires a coordinated strategy which involves policy reforms, institutional restructuring and strategically placed and well funded programmes of intervention.
He made this remark at the opening ceremony of agricultural processing workshop in Abuja, according to him, agricultural production system is dominated by small scale farmers struggling to meet our National Food demand where production systems is characterised by low productivity, overdependence on rain-fed to the exclusion of irrigation, poor harvest, high wastage, low value addition and poor market linkages, therefore the system has limited capability to improve and sustain our agricultural system hence our poverty reduction goals and indeed attainment of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to halve the poverty level by year 2015 may indeed be unattainable.
Waziri stated that our policy in agriculture is being restructured to allow greater participation of private sectors in critical areas of input delivery and services, improve extension services and facilitate access to market through linkages. Also, that Nigeria is endowed with human and natural resources and these are under exploited, the market potential for our agricultural commodities is enormous and extends beyond our border. "There is no area in which sustainable development could be more important to meet the needs of citisenry than Agriculture and food supplies. The current global high food prices is therefore a challenge to us, we need to use this opportunity to transform and modernise agriculture".
The Minister further said that agriculture remains the bedrock of the nation's economy which provides employment to over 70 per cent of our population, contributing about 39 per cent to our Gross Domestic Profit (GDP). We are indeed lucky in this country that our climate and ecology are quite adequate to support production of various kinds of agricultural commodities to have significant impact on our economy."
In a paper presented by the Assistant General Manager Nigeria Export Promotion Council, Mr. Amadi Ezeagu, on packaging concepts of products for local market and export, he disclosed that the word packaging means the act of ensuring the safety and shelf life of the products to reach the appropriate destination or the consumer in good condition while maximising sales and profits.
The national president of National Alliance for Agricultural Processing (NAAP), Hon Maureen lwobi, said that alot of people are into farming, yet we still have scarcity of food in the area of processing and packaging. Farmers in the grassroots were eager to have solution on how their harvested products will be preserved and packaged for elimination of their waste products.
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