As the 2021 farming season begin, Rice farmers in Rivers State are calling on farmers to grow and consume local Rice.
The Rivers State chapter of the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) expressed it’s frustration that nothing is set aside for Rice production in Rivers State annual budget, despite the huge potential of production of Rice.
The farmers in an interview with our reporter enumerated some of their challenges to include non availability of Rice processing and packaging plant, lack of high breed seedlings and absent of free interest loans.
“The government is failing on their own part. They will budget billions for agriculture, we will be expecting, but nothing will come up. Last year we had over 40 billions from government to agriculture, but I don’t know how it was used.”
“We are facing difficulty in this State because of no support from government. The mill is dilapidated, we don’t have Rice Mill”
” The huge harvest we expected did not meet our expectations, because the number of hecters expected by the Rice farmers were not up to what we planned for. It is not even enough for peasant consumption not to talk of commercialising them”
The Rice farmers told our reporter that growing Rice has a lot of potential which will improve the internally generated revenue in Rivers State. They are asking the Rivers State Government to go beyond making statements and address the challenges faced by farmers in the State. And that government should aid the farmers to acquire a large area of land.
The Rice farmers also revealed that Rice is a speedy kind of cash crop that takes three to four months for harvest. They therefore appealed to the government to work with them to achieve big, adding that the credit will go to the government.
Meanwhile, a member of the Civil Society Organization (CLO) in Rivers State, Enefa Georgewill in an interview, said despite the 40 billion naira budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Agriculture in 2020, nothing significance seems to be achieved. Enefa Georgewill said the Rivers State Government led by Ezenwo Nyesom Wike has not improved on previous Agricultural programmes in the State. He also said this could be responsible for the poor unemployment indexes carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics on Unemployment Indexes in the State.
Enefa Georgewill further call on the Rivers State Government to fix the dilapedated section of the Ministry of Agriculture in particular and the Rivers State Secretariat in general for workers, rather than using billions of naira to renovate and build Assembly quarters for law makers.
