Bumper harvest stimulates commercial activities in Kura

Our correspondents who visited Kura recently report that despite the bumper harvest, the price of foodstuff, especially rice, in the area remained stable.Famous for the cultivation of local rice, residents of the area, located in the outskirts of Kano metropolis, along Kano-Zaria Expressway, are in one way or the other involved in rice cultivation and […]

Our correspondents who visited Kura recently report that despite the bumper harvest, the price of foodstuff, especially rice, in the area remained stable.
Famous for the cultivation of local rice, residents of the area, located in the outskirts of Kano metropolis, along Kano-Zaria Expressway, are in one way or the other involved in rice cultivation and marketing which makes Kura people stand tall in the cultivation of rice.
When our correspondents visited Kura at the weekend, rice merchants were seen making brisk business. Farmers and traders were also seen at various locations where local rice is processed. Rice processing centres dot the major roads in the community.
While farmers cultivate the crop,; middlemen buy it from them, process and sell to merchants who buy in bulk and export to nearby countries and to other parts of Nigeria.
Women and children in the community are not left out of the business. While the women are responsible for boiling, measuring and bagging the processed rice, youths are involved in farming, cultivating and marketing the commodity.
Speaking to our correspondents, Haladu Audu (25) said a 100 kilograms bag of local rice goes for N13, 500, adding, “I buy rice from farmers on their farmland and after processing, I sell it to traders. The market is booming now because rice is everywhere. But during dry season, the business will not be flourishing. Now, I sell more than five bags daily and this is because the commodity is available and cheap. During dry season a bag goes for N16, 000 or N17, 000 and it will not even be available,” he said.
Awal Suleiman is one of the rice farmers in Kura, he said, “I’m a rice farmer but I also trade on the commodity. I have since harvested and sold my rice to traders from other parts of the country. Now, I’m fully into the business of buying and selling of rice with the money I made from my farm. Our major challenge is credit because the traders buy from us on credit. Farmers don’t allow us to carry their rice on credit,” he said.
He explained that despite the availability of rice in large quantity, the price remained high because big rice companies and merchants are coming to buy in large quantity from the farmers directly at higher prices than the local traders can afford.
“The big companies buy unprocessed rice from farmers and go and process with bigger and better mills to get high quality rice. Before they started coming three years ago, we always have surplus rice that at times the price comes down to as low as N10,000 per bag,” he said.
An operator of a local rice mill in Kura, Haruna Kura, said since the commencement of harvest this year he has been operating for 24 hours in order to meet the demands of customers.
“We are working day and night here because we have enough rice to mill. We don’t need electricity in our job, because we are using diesel powered grinding machines to operate our locally fabricated mills,” he said.