An Agricultural Economist has decried the poor processing and packaging of agricultural commodities in the country.
In a lecture title 'Developing Agricultural Value Chain towards Nigeria's Vision 20-2020,' Eric Ebor of the African Institute for Applied Economics at the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) 6th Agriculture Summit in Abuja said Nigerian farmers do not use mechanised facilities in processing farm produce.
Ebor said agricultural commodities are handled and sold without efficient packaging and labelling in Nigeria. He said the values of commodities that are not properly processed are to a large extent reduced. He called for an improvement in processing through the use of efficient technologies that will reduce drudgery.
The Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Dr. Abba Sayyadi Ruma said government will provide efficient means of processing agricultural commodities in addition to the provision of inputs and services. "The objective is to eliminate the current constraints associated with agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, seeds and agro-chemicals. These constrains includes high prices, low quality of inputs, non availability of point of needs and lack of product know-how by the farmers," he said.
The Minister said government would continue to subsidise 'these critical inputs at a reasonable rate.' He noted that in order to ensure that subsidies get to the beneficiaries; the inputs would be sold at designated sales points with the subsidized prices printed on the vouchers.
"Young school leavers would be formed into agro-chemicals spraying groups, trained and empowered with soft loans to carry out spraying on farmers' plots in addition to training farmers on the use of agro-chemicals," Ruma said.
