Anthony Nwakaegho/NaijaAgroNet
An Ofada rice farmer and the Chief Executive Officer of Chileo
Farms, Mrs Chinasa Asonye has decried the cost of rice
production in the country.
Speaking
to NaijaAgroNet at
the 2013 forum organised by the Commercial Agricultural Development Project (CADP) under the Lagos State
Ministry of Agriculture, in an exclusive interview, Mrs. Asonye noted that the cost of rice production posed
a lot of challenges to the farmers in Lagos State, until the intervention of
the CADP through the provision of equipment and other incentives.
She said at the event with theme ”Media and the challenges of food security
in Nigeria” that
despite farmers do not have enough land, CADP intervention to crop has helped
to cut down cost to where it is now.
NaijaAgroNet gathered
from her that the rice farmers produce once a year and gather all that they
have to sell and after that they begin to look for where they can buy.
She called on government to intervene in the area of
irrigation, fertilizer, equipment for winnowing the rice, planting the rice.
She explained that the Ofada rice farmers were packaging on
their own which increased the cost, until CADP came with the intervention of
sponsoring and packaging the rice for the farmers.
“There is nothing like one going into food business because
without food you will not be able to satisfy everybody. People should venture
in any business about food and agriculture no matter how small they produce;
they must always sell to satisfy other people,” Chileo CEO explained.
She told NaijaAgroNet
that her product and that of other Ofada rice producers are not in the market
because they have limited market and says that they don’t have enough to get
into the market, but only supply to people that want it.
“We are clamouring for more campaign so that the campaign for
awareness by the media can work. We need more land for farming because it takes
a lot especially this red rice that I specialise in producing. The red rice is
the short and stunted, brownish in colour from Abeokuta. A lot of people like
it, but its more expensive than the Agasa rice which is the long green rice.
There are 270specie of Ofada rice so it depends on the one you want to specialise.
“I specialised in red rice and the CADP has helped us with
land, winnowing machines and inputs like fertiliser, while we only provide the
labour. The CADP intervention has helped, and that is why we can cut down cost.
If we do everything by ourselves, consumes of the Ofada rice cannot buy it at
N300. They will buy it at almost N800 per kilogramme, so we build in all these
cost,” she said.
NaijaAgroNet was
informed by Chinasa that her red packaged Ofada rice are in 500kg,1kg and 50kg
in bags and the prices are N300 for 500kg, I kg is N600 respectively.
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