Anchor Borrower Programme provides quality inputs to small holder farmers – CBN
NAN-HE-17
Farmers
By Kabir Muhammad
Abuja, July 18, 2017 (NAN) The Deputy Director, CBN Anchor Borrower Programme (ABP), Hajia Amina Umar, says ABP has provided quality agricultural inputs to numerous small-holder farmers in the country.
Umar said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja.
According to her, the programme has also complemented other agricultural schemes of the CBN and raises the status of the subsistence small-holder farmers to commercial contract growers with attendant increase in agricultural productivity and farm income.
The deputy director said the collaborative efforts between the CBN and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on agricultural value-chain financing yielded positive results.
“Nigeria’s food import bill is exceptionally high. The top four import commodities which include rice, wheat, fish and sugar consume over N1.0 trillion in foreign exchange annually.
“Furthermore, relying heavily on food importation fuels domestic inflation, deflates our foreign reserves, displaces local production and creates unemployment.
“Indeed, import dependency, especially on commodities for which our country has comparative advantage to produce, is not acceptable and sustainable either economically or politically,’’ she added.
Umar noted that apart from foreign exchange conservation, increasing rice production is a necessity, as rice importation proffered no future for any nation in the long term.
“The Global Economic Symposium 2015 reported a sustained rise in the price of rice over the past seven to eight years, which indicates that we have been consuming more than we have been producing.
“Hence, global rice stocks are being depleted, with the current stocks at their lowest since the 1970s. This implies that Nigeria cannot afford to continually depend on imported rice,’’ she said.
She said it was based on reason that the apex bank included rice in the Foreign Exchange exclusion list with the overarching objective of salvaging the industry.
“This will encourage the farmers to go back to their farms and which will increase the low productivity in our mills.
“This is against the backdrop that though huge investments into the industry was made with the setting up of 40 integrated rice mills, the industry continues to suffer as a result of low yield rice varieties, poor farm practices and lack of good quality farm inputs.
“Other challenges facing the industry include non-utilisation of available cultivable lands, manual system of production and adequate funding for the establishment and development of nucleus farms and small farmers out-grower schemes,’’ she said.
Umar said in line with CBN’s developmental initiative, the bank introduced the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme to ameliorate the challenges. (NAN)
KM/ESAN/IA
Edited by Abiodun Esan/Idris Abdulrahman