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Nigeria is ranked as one of the world’s largest producers of yam with
about 60 per cent of global production of the agricultural product, the
Federal Government announced on Wednesday.
It stated that the ranking was done by the Food and Agricultural
Organisation of the United Nations, but added that the country was not
among the comity of yam exporting nations.
This, according to the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Umar, was due to lack of
quality seeds and efficient seed production.
He disclosed this in Abuja at the National Awareness Workshop on yam,
organised by the Advocacy and Resource Mobilisation Team of Yam
Improvement for Income and Food Security in West Africa, an initiative
of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.
Umar, who was represented by the Director of Agriculture, FMARD,
Frank Kudla, said IITA under its YIIFSWA programme saw the need to
develop high ratio multiplication technologies.