The Competitive Africa Rice Platform has credited the rise in domestic rice production to the influx of Nigerian aggregators who have been buying more paddy rice from local farmers in the country.

This viewpoint contrasts with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s (MoFA) claim that Phase one of the Planting for Food and Jobs programme (PFJ1) has resulted in an 80 percent increase in domestic rice production.

In an interview Citi Business News on Saturday, Yaw Adu Poku, the Chairman of the Competitive Africa Rice Platform, acknowledged the progress made by PFJ1, but highlighted that the game changer was the increase in paddy rice purchases by foreign aggregators.

“What has made production of rice more, I will not attribute it to the PFJ 1. For the last two three years, there has been an influx of foreign aggregators especially from Nigeria coming to buy our paddy not our milled rice because of the policy on banning commodities in Nigeria by the previous Buhari government”, he noted.

Adu Poku further explained: “So, rice that were not sold was all bought by the Nigerian aggregators, and they came the following years. So that informed farmers to go into the expansion of their rice farms, and last year, they could not sell rice because the import ban had been lifted in Nigeria. About half of what was produced last year is still in the hands of farmers.”

Introduced in 2017, the PFJ Phase one aimed to modernise agriculture, ensure food security, and boost farmers’ profitability. According to MoFA, the implementation of this programme has led to a significant increase in domestic rice production, from 570,000 metric tonnes in 2016 to 1,143,000 metric tonnes in 2021.