By Mike Adeyemi
The Kwara Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (KWACCIMA) has said the exploration of rice plantation and milling in Kwara North as instructed by the Senate President Dr. Bukola Saraki will soon start.
Speaking on this development, the vice president of KWACCIMA Olalekan Fatai stated this during a chart with Pilot Business in his office, recently.
According to him, ‘base on the Senate President’s advice, we have moved towards that. The first thing we did was to constitute a committee headed by the deputy president of KWACCIMA, who is in charge of Agriculture’.
“We have made a visit to Patigi and Lafiagi axis on visibility study of the area. Already there exist Rice plantation alongside Rice milling company, but moribund. We are trying to find out why the company is not performing”.
“The peculiarity of the area in terms of accessibility is a big challenge. But we are talking to our members to see what we can do”.
He said, ‘what the chamber want to do is to provide infrastructure to the area and we want to partners with the Kwara State Government on how to make this possible’.
Olalekan further noted that KWACCIMA will soon get back to the Senate President on efforts taken so far.
You will recall that the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki in May this year during a courtesy visit to him in Abuja by the executive members of Kwara Chambers of Commerce, Industries Mines and Agriculture (KWACCIMA) charged the chamber to look towards Kwara North for rice cultivation and milling.
Recent observation noted that with fertile land in the Kwara North, the state has a comparative advantage in Rice production with a land mass of over 34,600sqkm, which translates to an approximated soil mass of 4,185,500 hectares.
If 78,000 farmers are made to just cultivate 10 per cent of the state land mass that will translate to 418,550 hectares of farmland and 5.37 hectares per farmer. With a normal yield of 1.5 to two metric tons of Rice per hectare, this is possible in Kwara State.
