Government officials look to biotechnology to cut Nigeria's £2.38bn food import bill

GOVERNMENT officials are desperately trying to boost Nigerian agriculture in a bid to save the nation a whopping N1trn (£2.38bn) which is currently been spent importing several food items that ministers feel could be grown locally.

 

Yesterday, Professor Baba Abubakar, the executive secretary of the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, revealed that the importation of certain foodstuffs, especially, rice, wheat, sugar and fish, has continued to bleed the nation’s economy dry. Speaking at a sensitisation seminar on genetically modified organisms and agricultural biotechnology, he noted with dismay that Nigeria had remained a large food importer, despite massive uncultivated agricultural land across the country.

 

Professor Abubakar said: “Nigeria spends over N1trnn on the top four food imports annually and farmers have limited capacity and use techniques that adversely affect soil fertility, water and biodiversity. Human-induced climate change compounds the issue.”

 

He added that Nigeria is the largest importer of US hard red and white wheat worth N635bn annually, the world’s number two importer of rice at N356bn, while N217bn is spent on sugar and N97bn on fish. Professor Abubakar, who described the development as unacceptable, warned that unless farmers were empowered with biotechnology, the problem might linger into the future.

 

Applying the principle of total productivity factor, he revealed that of Nigeria’s 98m hectares of land, 74m, representing 75% was good for farming but lamented that less than half was put to use. Although Nigeria's is the world's sixth largest agricultural producer, her large population, means that certain items need to be imported.