By Chibuike Nwabuko
Executive Director of Lake Chad Research Institute, Gbenga Olabanji, has said that to cut down on the $22million per annum spending on food importation in Nigeria, there is need to have Investment Plan in seed production. This will give farmers easier access to seed for planting and fast track food sufficiency.
Gbenga who said this in the just concluded workshop on seed with the theme: Addressing Challenges of Early Generation of Seed System”, called for seed subsidy to empower the farmers the more and increase their production.
According to him,”When there is subsidy in seed production, there would be mass production of that commodity. Like our farmers now, if our government decides to subsidise food for our farmers,we would be self sufficient in major commodities for production,where we spend so much money importing food.
Gbenga said the investment plan entails bringing all the stakeholders together for a common front in seed production, noting that the intervention for farmers would be for three years to enable them be independent and operate seamlessly on their own afterwards
He said,”our climatic conditions reveal that every state can grow major foods we spend hugely to import and intervention from our government by way of subsidy for farmers will help Nigeria address high spending on food importation.
The Executive Director noted further that seed companies need to have intervention to motivate them to produce seeds, adding that prior to now, there was no seed company that produces wheat seeds in the country.
Gbenga said that,”Currently,we have eight of such seed companies and that with incentives in place for seed companies to key into, we will have up to 15-20 seed companies.”