THE Federal Government of Nigeria has revealed plans to utilise vacant acres of land in tertiary institutions for farming as part of measures to boost food supply across the nation.
Reports state that this initiative was made known by Senator Abubakar Kyari, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Eastern Nigeria Union Conference Centenary Public Lecture and Food Summit, with the theme ‘Ending Food Shortage in Nigeria, How to Apply the Surplus Concept’, in Port Harcourt last Friday.
Kyari, who was represented by the Ministry’s Deputy Director of Nutrition and Food Safety, Nuhu Kilishi, stated that institutions have been contacted via letters to seek their consent.
He revealed that some of the tertiary institutions have started responding in favour of the project, giving assurance that the move would revive farming in schools.
Kyari said: “We want to revive farming in the schools and institutions. We have written to the universities and schools for them to let us utilise hectares of their land that are unused.
“They have started responding; by the time we have a reasonable level of compliance, there is going to be a programme that would ensure that those empty lands are being used for cultivation and this will add to food availability.”
While talking, he noted that the Federal Government would provide solar irrigation pumps in a bid to reduce the cost of cultivation of farming while advising farmers not to stop at the production of agricultural produce, but to explore the options of processing those products to maximise profit.
