Under its In-Growers Scheme,wet season rice farming programme has taken off in Abia State, as part of plans to strengthen food security across the state.

The Commissioner for Information, Prince Okey Kanu, disclosed that the state’s executive councilhad, at its last weekly meeting, directed that the programme whose target is to increase local rice production and empower farmers across the state, be formally flagged off.

Kanu disclosed that the Ministry of Agriculture is already aggregating farmers’cooperatives across their various crop value chains. He said this would commence with rice cultivation, with a target of 8,500 hectares of land at different communities in the rice bales of Abia North Senatorial zone, with over 400 verified rice farmers in Ndi-Okereke, Abam, farming over 500 hectares, while additional cultivation is ongoing on 150 hectares at Owerenta.

“Before now, the state government through the agriculture ministry had commenced planting of rice in that part of the state, which will be replicated at other state-owned rice farmlands at Bende, Mkpa, Ofeme, Ozuitem, NdiOkereke and Ndi-Oji Abam.”

While addressing the concerns on the alleged diversion of agricultural support for farmers, the Commissioner for Agriculture Commissioner, Dr Agbaeze, disclosed that his ministry has initiated a state-wide enumeration process to collect data on real farmers.

He said the process would be stored in a secured cloud system with the aid of technology, such that the location of each farmer can easily be verified through a mobile device, emphasising that only genuine farmers with actual farms, identified and geo-mapped with precise coordinates, will qualify for the state government’s interventions.

According to him, this is in view of the present administration’s commitment to de-politicise agricultural support by ensuring that only genuine farmers benefit from its programme, stressing that “the ongoing data-driven approach would eliminate fraudulent claims and redirect resources to those actively contributing to food production and rural development.”