Cassava bread: Ministry, BOA sign N2.4b MoU

Disclosing this at the weekend in Abuja, Adesina said: “We are trying to reach 29,500 farmers under this facility. It will provide them access to cheap loans, mechanised services support and access to inputs.”The minister said the N2.4 billion is part of the Cassava Development Fund, which will be run by the Bank of Agriculture […]

Disclosing this at the weekend in Abuja, Adesina said: “We are trying to reach 29,500 farmers under this facility. It will provide them access to cheap loans, mechanised services support and access to inputs.”
The minister said the N2.4 billion is part of the Cassava Development Fund, which will be run by the Bank of Agriculture to facilitate the availability of inputs and services for cassava farmers across the country.
 N912 million will be dedicated to mecha-nisation support for the farmers, which will be 50% grant and 50% loan; N708 million will be used to provide planting materials to support these farmers and that will be in terms of grants; N796 million will be used to support the provision of inputs to support cassava farmers at 50% loan and 50% grant, he said.
The minister said the intervention in subs-tituting 20 percent of imported wheat flour with high quality cassava flour will save the country N127 billion which would have gone to foreign wheat farmers.
The intervention will take into conside-ration, the whole cassava bread supply chain: root production, flour production, bread baking, marketing and research and development. In order to sustain the programme, the president has released N9.9 billion from the wheat levy to support the effort, he said.
The Managing Director and Chief Exe-cutive Officer, Bank of Agriculture, Dr. Mohammed Santuraki, said the bank is ready at all times to assist in the development of the agriculture sector as that is mainly their mandate.