Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has said the state would soon be producing enough rice to replace its famous groundnut pyramids.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Ganduje said his administration’s massive agriculture programme is focused on wheat, tomatoes and rice.
“We have chosen three areas in agriculture where we have comparative advantage. One is the production of wheat, the production of rice and the production of tomatoes. We have people who are ready to buy these things and the farmers are eager because we are providing an enabling environment.
“What we have discovered is that agriculture should not be limited to rainy season alone and so, we are now utilising our dams. We have over 24 dams in the state and we are using them for irrigation.
“Just recently, Kano State Government distributed 5000 water pumps and they were distributed to the actual farmers because I took it as a responsibility to visit all the irrigation clusters.
“In fact, I was involved in measuring the size of the farms. So, every farmer who is involved in the cluster, we know the size of his farm the amount of fertilizer he requires, the amount of insecticide,” he said.
“We have reinstated our fertilizer blending plant which is now working 24 hours. We spent over N500 million on it and any fertilizer we are producing there is much better than any fertilizer that is imported because the fertilizers we produce there is based on the chemical nature of the soil in Kano State.”
Ganduje explained further: “We have rice millers now. I was surprised when we visited one of the rice millers and he told us that one lady came from Lagos looking for 50 trucks of rice, but the company could only provide 35.
“Another one came from Enugu looking for 30 trucks, but could only get 10 trucks and he has the raw materials to work up to December. If there is any farmer who has produced rice or wheat, he is ready to buy. So, you can see that farming is lucrative, Very soon, we will establish rice pyramids to replace the groundnut pyramids in Kano,” Ganduje stressed.