The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dr Akinwumi Adesina has said that
the ministry has distributed over 32,000 disease free improved varieties of
Plantain/Banana suckers to about 1000 farmers in four pilot States in the
country.
Adesina who was
represented by the
Deputy Director, Horticulture Transformation Value Chain and the National Project
Co-coordinator, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO-UN) in the Ministry, Mr Michael Kanu dropped the hint at a six-day
Train-the- Trainer Workshop for farmers in Umuahia, Abia State and said that
the benefitting states include Abia, Delta, Oyo and Cross River.
NaijaAgroNet learnt from the Minister that the workshop was organised by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development in collaboration with the FAO-UN
under the Technical Cooperation Project, aimed at positioning horticulture in
the nation as a channel of growth for economic diversity, poverty reduction,
wealth and job creation.
Director of Information in the Ministry, Greyne
Anosike, expressed Nigeria’s profound gratitude to FAO-UN Country
Representative in Nigeria, Dr. Louise Sethswealo for supporting the campaign
for global food security especially, in Nigeria and solicited for more support
from FAO.
The Desk Officer, Technical Cooperation Project,
FAO-UN, Adeola Akinrinlola who spoke on behalf of the FAO-UN Country Representative,
explained that the workshop was organised to acquaint farmers in Umuahia, Abia
State with the latest plantain/banana production techniques and post harvest
technologies in order to make farming business a profitable venture.
He explained that in line with UN Agricultural
support mandate to developing countries to improve in the technical skills of
farmers, overcome production constraints and to establish pilot field planting
nurseries/suckers as a source of tissue culture planting materials beyond the
project life time, FAO-UN provided a funding grant of $477,000 Dollars
(N77million] to the Ministry to compliment the shortfall in her budgetary
provision of $1.4m (about N 222 million) towards funding this project.
AN/EDop
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pix:Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dr Akinwumi Adesina