Nigeria Must Produce 20 Tonnes of Rice to meet Consumer’s Demand

“We are consuming about 6 to 7 million metric tonnes of head rice meaning we need 12 to 14 million metric tonnes paddy. With our growing population, we must be aiming at producing 15 to 20 million metric tonnes of paddy to be self sufficient.”
These are the words of Oluwarotimi Fashola, team head, projects, Elephant Group, as he called for the increase in amount of locally grown rice in Nigeria.
Fashola opined that the growing population demand in the country requires increased productivity and increased hectares of land.
He added that there need to be a double of production capacity, which requires double cropping, planting both wet and dry seasons that will require irrigation, complete mechanisation from planting to harvesting, increased milling capacity.
He said, “To reduce the cost of production of home grown rice in the country, government needs to provide for farmers proper farm mechanisation such as planters, harvesters and affordable input and a consistent rice policy over a period of at least ten years.”
He however noted that more support is needed from the government to boost the rice value chain in order to make it more profitable for agribusiness owners as it is being practised in other countries.
“Thailand and India are good examples for rice. Thailand does a lot for the rice value chain. For example, the country has irrigation schemes for rice farming, they have over 70 research centres for rice, they have a bank dedicated to rice farmers,” he said.
He applauded the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on its rice policy initiative such as the paddy aggregation scheme 2 which has encouraged farmers to go into rice farming, with this, rice processors now buy rice from farmers to process for consumption.