Agro Hub Nigeria

There are signs that the European Union is considering reversing its ban on Nigeria's agricultural produce as revealed by the Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service .The Coordinating Director of the agency, Dr. Vincent Isegbe, gave the hint in Lagos at the opening of a two-day training workshop on plant health inspection and certification of vegetables for exporters and farmers. Isegbe revealed  that the EU had promised to reverse the ban if necessary measures were put in place before 2019.He lamented that the European Union ban on Nigeria’s beans had a crippling  effect on the economy, emphasizing the need for Nigeria to avoid such rejection of the Nation’s agricultural commodities in the future.According to him “We have had issues in the past concerning beans where the European Union suspended Nigeria for three years for beans export. That is not good for us because it means that all thefarmers who are producing beans can no more export the quantity that they used to export”.“

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, has disclosed the plans to boost local production of fish species in an attempt to reduce the huge importation of the product into the country and also to conserve foreign exchange in the fishery sector. He made this known during an interactive session with the Management of Triton Group, one of the leading Stakeholders in Nigeria’s fishery sector, during their courtesy visit to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development head office in Abuja. Ogbeh said that a whooping $700 million (about N210 billion) is spent annually on the importation of fish and  it is no longer sustainable for the present administration under President Muhammadu Buhari to continue to spend such amount on fish imports at this period when the Nigerian economy had slipped into recession. The Minister stated that more funds would be provided to research institutes to scale up research work into the local production of other species of

The governor of Osun state, Rauf Aregbesola, has called for a ban on the export of primary farm produce as a way to ensure food sufficiency in the country. Aregbesola who made the call in Osogbo in a statement issued by his media aide, Semiu Okanlawon, stated that the ban would facilitate  the value chain of the nation’s agricultural industry. The governor cited that it is very necessary to provide enough for local consumption before exporting the produce. The governor  also impelled government at all levels to wrk out measures that would make agriculture attractive to  the younger generation. Mr Aregbesola noted that this would be a potent  option towards  diversification of the economy, adding that Nigeria is yet to show serious efforts towards making farming a viable venture. “We should stop exporting primary produce and start adding value. The value of a kilogramme of exported cocoa beans increases 5,000 percent by the time it comes back as chocolate,” he said. Aregbes