The Federal Government and states said it will spend a whopping N70bn to set up cattle ranches in 10 states in a pilot scheme.
The Secretary of the Sub-Committee, National Livestock Transformation Plan of the National Economic Council, Dr. Andrew Kwasari, disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday.
Kwasari listed the states in partnership with the federal government where the pilot scheme will take off as Adamawa, Benue, Ebonyi, Edo, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Oyo, Plateau, Taraba and Zamfara saying that the project was one of the programmes lined up to end herders, farmers’ crisis in the country.
He said the Federal Government and states would spend N70bn in the first three years of the pilot phase of the programme, adding that N179bn would be spent over a period of 10 years on the national livestock implementation.
Kwasari said, “A ranch design has also been proposed in models of various sizes clustered in 94 locations in the 10 pilot states… Based on the carrying capacity of each of the model ranches above, as determined by pasture and fodder yields, land is allocated for pasture production.”
