AIC Gains Control Of 9,000 Acres Of Land For Agricultural Use

In a bid to further increase the usage of the country’s agricultural lands, the Agro-Investment Corporation (AIC) recently gained control of 9,000 acres of land for this purpose.

This was disclosed by Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Floyd Green, who said this represents land that “would have otherwise gone into housing or something else that will now be used for agricultural production”.

“We cannot approach the preservation of agricultural land as we have over the last five decades. That approach has focused more on preservation and less on utilisation and has left us with thousands of hectares of agricultural lands that have been transformed into informal settlements and countless hectares of unused and underutilised land,” Mr. Green said, during his contribution to the  2021/22 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday (May 12).

Mr. Green said the new approach now being taken includes increasing the Ministry’s agricultural “land bank”, noting that part of his vision is for good agricultural lands, which are owned by the Government but are now outside the purview of the Ministry  of Agriculture, to be transferred to the Ministry.

“In this regard, we have engaged the National Housing Trust (NHT) and the National Land Agency (NLA) to transfer land to the Ministry that is more appropriate for agriculture,” he said, stressing that sufficient arable land is critical to the nation’s food security, and pledged to “work assiduously to protect all our agricultural land”.

In addition, as part of the new approach for greater utilisation of arable lands, the Minister said this will involve engagement with the private sector,  as well as the assessment of all the Ministry’s agricultural land holdings and crafting a structured strategic approach for their use.

“The Ministry that I now lead has seen the return of land into agriculture. We are not only protecting, we are increasing our fold,” he said.