Agric Minister assures farmers of tractors to boost food production

The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abubakar Kyari, has assured farmers of rolling out tractors to boost food production during the wet season farming.

Kyari stated this on Wednesday in Abuja during a technical meeting with John Deere Group on agricultural Mechanisation.

He expressed optimism that the Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU), signed in November 2023 to provide 2,000 tractors in 2024 for farmers was still achievable.

The Federal Government in November 2023, signed  an MoU with John Deere, Asia (Singapore) Ltd. on agricultural mechanisation to enhance food security.

He expressed optimism that the agreement  signed  to provide 2,000 tractors in 2024 for farmers was  still achievable.

“Basically, some of these tractors will go to service providers and service  to provide service to smallholder farmers at a cheap rate.

” That is why we want to even make sure that they try and give these tractors at the lowest possible price to the farmers.

” We are also going to collaborate with the large scale farmers because they also contribute to food security.

” So it is also important we engage with both the smallholder and large scale farmers.

“We are under-tractorised right now as a country and every journey begins with a step.

” John Deere is one of the largest agricultural equipment manufacturers in the world.

“I think it is the right step in the right direction. The federal government under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu has decided that  this should work time,” he said.

Earlier, the Managing Director, John Deere Ltd,  Mr Stephan Gouws, said the programme in delivering the tractors included capacity building, technology transfer among others.

Gouws said that the company was not out to sell tractors and leave Nigeria as others did in the past.

” The major thing we want to do is to increase the profitability of the farmers.

“It can be the smallholder farmer or large holder farmer, the goal of all these is to increase profitability.

” We want to build the community, and we have this programme running elsewhere in Africa.

” It is the largest progamme we are unlocking and we are really excited,” he said.