LCRI to enhance wheat production

The Lake Chad Research Institute (LCRI) has concluded arrangements to enhance the production of wheat toward making the country self-sufficient in wheat productions by 2021 with the political will of current administration. The executive director of the LCRI, Dr. Gbenga Olabanji, said this during the 2016 in-house meeting and three-day relief workshop, organised for the […]

The Lake Chad Research Institute (LCRI) has concluded arrangements to enhance the production of wheat toward making the country self-sufficient in wheat productions by 2021 with the political will of current administration.
The executive director of the LCRI, Dr. Gbenga Olabanji, said this during the 2016 in-house meeting and three-day relief workshop, organised for the North East region in Maiduguri.
He said despite security challenges in the region, the institute was able to make appreciable progress in its research effort with the release of two rain-fed wheat varieties in 2015.
He said the institute had suffered major setback in agricultural production due to security challenges that displaced many families from their communities to seek safety elsewhere.
He said as a result agriculture that remained the major source of livelihood of the people has been abandoned for over five years now.
“We have total land area of 1.2 million hectares and with the improved varieties of wheat developed by the Lake Chad Research Institute, we are very hopeful that in the next five years, beginning from the 2016/17 farming season, we shall cultivate wheat seeds above 60 hectares and that will transform to 2 million metrics tons.
“Our requirement as a nation is of million metric tons annually. So, if by 2017 we can produce 2 million tons which is 50 percent of our total requirement as a nation, that goes to tell you that in the year 2021, we shall be self-sufficient,” he said.
The speaker at the workshop and Head of Department of Economics and Agriculture, University of Maiduguri, Dr. Salisu Mohammed, urged governors of the North East states to take necessary measures to reposition agriculture with modern technology especially through the introduction of policies that could translate into meaningful output growth.
The president of the Farmers Village, Malam Alhami Lawan, appealed to LCRI to provide farmers in the area with soft loans, tractors and seeds on time as the rainy season sets in.