A Director at FaLGates Food, Air Commodore Iliyasu Yahaya (rtd.) has said that, for Nigeria to have food security, national security should first be in place to protect farmers against all threats of insecurity.
At the second Annual Distributors and Suppliers’ conference and the launch of FaLRice, held in Kaduna at the weekend, Yahaya said that, while it is not the soldiers’ job to farm, but he is required to provide security against bandits and kidnappers.
He further said: “That is why all hands should be on deck so that the soldier is giving his weapons or arms to be able to protect the farmer, and the farmer should be giving his fertilizer and farm input so that everybody will bring food to the nation to ensure food security”.
Yahaya maintained that agriculture is for everybody as it has many channels.
He said: “People must not think when you say farming, they mean you must dirty yourself in the farm. But technology has come into farming, and you can be a computer operator, you can be a scientist doing crops fertilizer, you can be doing herbicide.
“There’s other trades in agriculture. People are neglecting simple weeding. You can use herbicide or you can use manual labour. And when you have your products at the end of the day, you’re going to put them on the ground.
“So you can see that everybody has a trade. And you need a logistician, a store manager, an accountant and a statistician to guide you on the performances of the crops, including profit and loss. When you have all that combination of various trades, you cannot say agriculture is for the poor man or is for a rich man, but for everybody with all hands on deck”.
Yahaya said that FaLGates Food has over 200 casual staff in charge of loading, uploading, trashing and cleaning all the manual labour in the factory.
The Managing Director of Falgate Food, Mallam Abubakar Sadiq Falalu said that the agriculture and agro-allied company specialises in the production of parboiled rice, farming and supplies of agriculture and agro-allied commodities.
He explained that the conference is an annual event where stakeholders are appreciated.
He lamented the economic losses which the recent blackout in northern states brought on businesses, and called on the Federal Government, adding that there is no industrialisation without energy.
A distributor from Abia State, Chief Ebela Anezemba praised the company. He said that rice business is good as the product is the number one food in Nigeria. “If you don’t cook rice, you’ll make tuwo or other food with rice”, he said.
