Lafia -The Nasarawa Agriculture Development Programme (NADP) on Friday reiterated the need for farmers in the state to continually engage in dry season farming.
Mr Stephen Kpama, the Programme Manager of the agency, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lafia.
According to him, the practice will boost food security in both the state and country.
Kpama said that dry season farming was necessary to mitigate the food shortage that could result from inadequate rainfall this year.
“ The delay in rainfall this year which is culminating in low density rainfall across the country, including the state, must be leveraged on to dry season farming.
“Farmers must compensate the loss that might occur in food production through all-year-round farming.
“Farmers should practice irrigation system or plant varieties of early maturing crops that would be ready for harvest in three months. By this, human efforts would be used to supplant natural phenomena.’’
“Farmers should not only concentrate on vegetables during this period but expand their production to maize, rice, sugar cane, potatoes that have short yielding circle.’’
He also noted that most of the crops planted early were not growing well due to the delayed rainfall this farming season.
The Progamme Manager, however, appealed to private entrepreneurs to invest in tractor hiring services to trigger commercial farming in the state.
He said the state government was doing everything possible to ensure the availability of farm inputs to farmers in good time.
He attributed the delay in fertiliser supply to the transition from one government to another at the federal level and expressed the hope
that the issue would be addressed soon.
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Kpama said the NADP had received varieties of maize and rice seedlings from the West African Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP) for distribution to farmers free of charge.
He said NADP was collaborating with Olams Farm and some NGOs in the country to give farmers high yielding varieties of crops, to expand food production. (NAN)