Farmers reveal when price of rice will crash

Lagos - Rice farmers in Nigeria have revealed that the price of rice will go down in 2017 and promised to work with the federal government to help with the diversification project.

Aminu Goronyo who is the national president of Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) gave this assurance on Monday, December 5.
Goronyo revealed that the association had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with some farm input suppliers in the country to so that supply of cheap fertilisers and pesticides to boost production.
He explained that some saboteurs were behind the hike in the price of rice so as to make the government of President Muhammadu Buhari difficult.
He said: “We are going to assist the FG to produce more than enough rice for this country in 2017.
“It is part of the plan that we must bring down the price of rice in this country
“There are several efforts that we are making to see that in no distant time, this price of rice will come down for Nigerians to have access to affordable milled rice.”
He said the association was working on mapping and
registering rice farmers across the country and that this would help provide lad to rice farmers.
The president of the association promised that by 2017, the production of rice will double the seven million tonnes produced this year.
The Federal Government had said that the price of rice was set to fall from November with more Nigerians returning to their farms to focus on agriculture.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Adu Ogbeh said that the government could not be involved in the importation of rice and stressed that it would not encourage the importation of rice as it would be detrimental to local production.