ibironkeeniola 
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, has urged key stakeholders across the value chain to seek solutions towards improving the agriculture sector rather than dwell on the problems.
Nanono made the observation on Thursday while speaking at the National Seed Retreat held at the Ahmadu Bello University, Kano.
Stakeholders at the retreat had listed key challenges slowing the growth of the agriculture sector for his administration to tackle.
These included dearth of farm breeders and sub-optimal capacity of breeders, inadequate for breeding and seed production activities, low funding of research and untimely access to funding in the seed system.
Also, they listed the problems of poor farmer access to agricultural input, unfavourable investment business environment and high-lending rate of loans to agribusiness by commercial banks, among others.
Nanono in his response pointed out that while the issues raised were true, the focus must be on coordinating efforts to work out solutions to them.
“What we need to do here is to determine how we would get ourselves organised and how we focus to overcome these basic fundamental issues.
“Would there be some institutional changes? Would there be some leveraging on what are doing presently? And how do we go about doing that?” he said.
The minister explained that instead of research institutes waiting for budgetary allocations from the ministry which “comes late and competes with other issues,” they could source for international funding.
Nanono, therefore, urged stakeholders to brainstorm and develop proposals to fund various agro sub-sectors independent of government budgetary allocations.
The minister also approved the creation of a multi-sectorial committee that comprised government agencies, private sector, research institutes, and universities to lead the effort.
He also decried the lack of sufficient investment in the livestock sub-sector, adding that the sector “is a serious business and people are beginning to pay more attention to it”.
Stakeholders during the retreat called for the creation of necessary policies and legislation to back efforts towards solving the challenges.
SOURCE: AGRONIGERIA