The Cross River State Government has unveiled plans to cultivate 2,000 hectares of rice during the 2026 farming season as part of efforts to strengthen food security, boost local production and improve the supply of raw materials to agro-processing industries in the state NEGROIDHAVEN can report.
The Commissioner for Agriculture and Irrigation Development, Mr Johnson Ebokpo, disclosed this on Monday while briefing journalists at the Ernest Etim Bassey Press Centre, Calabar, during an update on the implementation of Project Grow, the state’s flagship agricultural transformation initiative.
Ebokpo said the rice expansion programme would be implemented in partnership with the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF) and is designed to address longstanding challenges in the agricultural value chain, particularly inadequate production volumes and weak market linkages.
According to him, the state is deliberately shifting from subsistence agriculture to a market-driven production system capable of supporting industrial-scale processing and attracting private sector investment.
He explained that while Cross River has historically been regarded as an agricultural state, production levels have remained below the threshold required to sustain large processing facilities and structured commodity markets.
“We must deal with the fundamentals. Access to markets and commercial production are critical. Agriculture can no longer be approached merely as a social intervention programme. It must become a business,” he said.
The commissioner noted that the planned rice cultivation programme would support the operations of the state’s rice processing facility, which currently depends heavily on supplies sourced from outside Cross River.
According to him, one of the major challenges confronting the facility has been the inability of local farmers to consistently meet the volume requirements needed for optimal operations.
He said the government is therefore creating a structured aggregation system that will link farmers and agribusiness operators directly to processors and guaranteed markets.
Ebokpo also disclosed that the state government had begun addressing longstanding land access constraints that have limited agricultural expansion in several communities.
He revealed that Governor Bassey Otu recently approved the payment of outstanding land royalties on thousands of hectares of government-acquired agricultural lands, some of which date back several decades.
According to him, settling the obligations will improve government-community relations and facilitate access to agricultural lands required for large-scale farming initiatives.
Providing further details on the programme, Project Grow Director, Mr Denis Ikpali, said arrangements had already been concluded with the National Agricultural Development Fund to provide input loans and support for the cultivation of the 2,000 hectares of rice during the 2026 season.
Ikpali explained that Project Grow was established to address structural challenges in agriculture, including poor access to markets, financing, aggregation systems and quality inputs.
He noted that the initiative currently operates across all 18 local government areas of the state and focuses on strategic value chains such as rice, maize, cassava, aquaculture and soybean.
The project director said the market-led approach being adopted by the state had already yielded positive results, including the facilitation of agricultural financing, farmer training programmes and commodity offtake agreements with major private sector operators.
He added that the initiative aims to build a commercially viable agricultural economy capable of generating employment, increasing farmers’ incomes and attracting long-term investments into the sector.
The planned rice expansion programme forms part of the Otu administration’s broader strategy to reposition agriculture as a key driver of economic growth and rural development across Cross River State.
