100 farmers get free fertilizer to boost food production in Jigawa

The Guri Local Government Council of Jigawa has distributed free fertilizer to 100 farmers in its bid to ensure food sufficiency in rural communities of the area.

The Council’s Information Officer, Alhaji Sanusi Doro, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Sunday in Dutse.

Doro said the council Chairman, Alhaji Musa Shuaibu, distributed the fertiliser to the farmers as a way of encouraging more people to engage in agriculture, with a view to boosting food security in the area, Jigawa and Nigeria at large.

According to the information officer, each of the farmers received one bag of NPK fertiliser.

He said the fertiliser distribution was under the government’s new agriculture initiative “Smart Farming”, aimed at assisting rural farmers to boost food production.

Shuaibu had told beneficiaries at the distribution ceremony that the gesture was aimed at assisting them to achieve a bumper harvest for both subsistence and commercial farming.

The information officer said the initiative was also part of the government’s efforts at cushioning the effect of the current economic crunch.

NAN reports that the price of fertilizer in the market, like other commodities, had gone up from its old price of N5,500, and currently sells for N8,500.

The hike in the price of the commodity, according to Alhaji Rabiu Khalid, the Managing Director of Jigawa State Agricultural Supply Company (JASCO), is a result of the surge in the price of the commodity’s raw materials. (NAN)