*Demands more funding
By; SANI ALIYU, Zaria
The Executive Director National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) Shika, Professor Abubakar Hassan has said that 70 per cent of the Institute’s budget is spent on the purchase of livestock feeds.
Hassan made this known while interacting with journalists in Zaria, adding that presently, their major challenge is how price of grains is skyrocketing in the country.
He said, the institute is working towards solving the challenges in its efforts to overcome those issues.
According to him, “livestock is one of the main transformation agenda of the food security programme of which poultry is one, small, large ruminant, diary and beef production.”
He said, to meet the demands, the institute has established five out stations of which Damaturu outstation in Yobe State is for Livestock Value Chain and that of Gwada in Niger State is for poultry production.
He added that the Talatan Mafara outstation in Zamfara State is for Sokoto Gudali Cattle production and small ruminants production in Edo State and swine production outstation is in Otukpo, Benue State.
Professor Hassan said to achieve all this, more funding needs to be provided and it will assist the institute to meet the demands of the majority by at least 80 per cent.
The Executive Director added that the outstation need to improve on the existing structure because they were old as Institute’s Headquarters.
He expressed concerns, “despite farmers are now aware of how to keep livestock, but yet we are not meeting the demands that will make the prices of animal commodities to come down for people to afford it.”
The Chief Executive assured that they want to expand their production of day old chicks to meet up the demands that is why the outstations were established as a replica of the NAPRI headquarters,
