Kebbi expects bumper rice harvest, targets 2.5m mt

Rice farmers in Kebbi State are expecting another bountiful harvest season as the state targets 2.5 million metric tonnes of rice during this year’s harvest. Farmers in major rice producing communities of Bagudo, Bunza, Suru, Argungu, Augie, Birnin Kebbi and Kamba, who planted earlier in the year, have started harvesting about a month ago and […]

Rice farmers in Kebbi State are expecting another bountiful harvest season as the state targets 2.5 million metric tonnes of rice during this year’s harvest.

Farmers in major rice producing communities of Bagudo, Bunza, Suru, Argungu, Augie, Birnin Kebbi and Kamba, who planted earlier in the year, have started harvesting about a month ago and are looking forward to a bumper harvest.

During this year’s dry season rice farming in the state, 50,000 farmers were registered by the state government to put the total number of rice farmers under the Anchor Borrowers Scheme (ABS) in the state at 128,000. This does not include about 200,000 other rice farmers outside the programme.

One of the 280 farmers at the Dan Kwale rice production cluster in Argungu area of the state, Muhammed Aliyu, told our correspondent that this year farmers in the area recorded increase in rice production because of the new farming practice they adopted: planting methods, choice of seeds and right application of agro-chemicals.

Aliyu said, “With the new method, the 186 hectares we farm on was well arranged to allow for more yield. Many of us harvest up to 10 bags of Paddy per line. It was a major boost to this year’s rice harvest, particularly for us in Argungu. Because of the new farm practice in 2017, I harvested 60 bags of rice. I sold half of it and kept the remaining half for my family’s consumption.”

The chairman of the Rice Farmers Association in the state, Alhaji Sahabi Augie, while expressing optimism about this year’s harvest, said rice production had become a serious business in the state.

Alh. Augie said, “Many people; civil servants, business men and contractors have returned to the farms in Kebbi because of the success that the rice farmers in the state have recorded. We are expecting a bumper harvest this year. Luckily, there is large market for it. In Kebbi State, we have farmers, who cultivated up to 15, 20 and even 200 hectares of rice fields. We are expecting nothing less than 2.5 million metric tonnes of rice in this year in Kebbi.”

A farmer at Duku area of Birnin Kebbi, Abdullahi Musa, said he could only get 50 bags of rice from his three hectares last year, but that from the rice he had harvested so far he was sure this year’s harvest would be far better.

Ahmed Idris, who claimed it was his first time to venture into dry season rice farming, said, “I cultivated one hectare of rice field. I expect to get about 100 bags of Paddy after the harvest. I am really happy,” he said.

The farmers said the Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Programme Phase I (ATASP1) greatly led to improvement in their output.

Optimistic about this year’s rice harvest in Kebbi State, a former Commissioner for Agriculture in the state, Alhaji Garba Dandiga, while answering questions from journalists during inspection of rice farms in some communities in the state, said 18 out of the 21 local government areas of the state were into rice production.

Alh. Dandiga said, “Out of these: Bagudo,Bunza,Suru,Birnin Kebbi, Argungu, Augie and two others were known to be major rice producing communities. This year, we will surpass our 1.2m metric tonnes record. We are targeting 2.5m metric tonnes of rice in this year.”