Nigeria Produces 60% Global Yam, Exports None - FG

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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.