In line with its efforts to encourage production of wheat, the Federal Government has scaled up activities to stop the importation of wheat into the country soon and create markets for farmers.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina made this known during the inaugural meeting of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NAG) at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel at the weekend.
He said the efforts of government towards encouraging the substitution of wheat with high quality cassava flour is already yielding positive results as the wheat imports to Nigeria declined from an all-time high of 4,051,000 MT in 2010 to 3,700,000 MT in 2012.
“As we implement accelerated cassava flour production, with the installation of the industrial scale cassava flour plants, expand cassava production and deploy hundreds of compact modular milling systems, Nigeria’s dependency on imported wheat will decline even further”.
Dr. Adesina said the government is looking into the local production of wheat in the Northern part of Nigeria as he informed members of the group that the Lake Chad Research Institute of Nigeria has released new high yielding tropical and heat tolerant wheat varieties that can yield up to 6 tons per hectare. This, according to him, is about four times the yield of temperate wheat varieties used in Nigeria during the effort to produce wheat in the 1980s.
He further explained that with the tropical wheat varieties that are presently available in the country and at the high yields being obtained, he held that it is profitable and economically-viable to produce wheat in Nigeria.
The Minister explained that 21,000 MT was harvested in 2012, from the new varieties, which according to him, would be used as seeds. The target, he said, is to plant 212,000 ha of wheat by 2014, with expected production of over 1 million MT and a projection to expand the cultivated area to 215,000 ha by 2015, with an anticipated production of 1.2 million MT. “So, in two years, if we accelerate investment, we should be able to produce 2.2 million MT of wheat. This would meet 68% of our domestic wheat requirements and save Nigeria N 431 Billion in wheat imports annually.”
He thereafter encouraged members to seriously consider investing in commercial wheat production to take advantage of the new opportunities.
On the 20% inclusion of cassava flour in bread, he said, “We have started training of the master bakers across the country. We are facilitating the private sector to secure low interest financing of over $200 million to import 18 large scale industrial cassava flour processing plants. The mills will process 3.1 million MT of high quality cassava flour, annually, and make Nigeria the largest processor of cassava flour in the world. The first set of mills will hit the ground this year”.
The Minister also briefed members on the establishment of Staple Crop Processing Zones (SCPZ) with tax and infrastructure incentives, to attract private sector companies to set up food processing plants in areas of high production, for import substitution.
This according to him, is to reduce the cost of doing business within these zones, with government upgrading infrastructure, especially the provision of power, water and roads.
The newly inaugurated Nigeria Agribusiness Group which is composed of leading CEOs and Chairpersons of major agribusiness firms in Nigeria is to have its own corporate persona and become the core group for driving agribusiness investments. The group is also expected to help identify the challenges to greater agribusiness investments and propose ways for resolving them.
Idowu Jokpeyibo (Mrs.)
For: Director Press/PR
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