A technical team from the Republic of South Korea in partnership with Bayelsa State has completed the installation of modern rice processing mills in the state.
The installation of the state-of-the-art mills, with capacity to process 40 metric tonnes of rice paddies per day, was completed at the state-owned School-to-Land Farm in Yenagoa, the state capital on Friday.
Speaking to journalists after a demonstration exercise on how the mills operate, leader of the delegation and Managing Director, Dae Sung Machinery and Construction Company Limited, Mr. Byung Chul Son, said the team had worked with the state ministry of agriculture since its arrival to train their staff in soil preparation, land irrigation, rice cultivation and milling.
Mr. Son said the mills will refine the process of rice production and that the state will require additional farming machinery such as dryer, per boiler and colour selector equipment to match the capacity of the milling machines.
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The Bayelsa State Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Prof. Beke Sese, explained that the South Korean Government donated to the four units of rice mills with a production capacity of 10 tonnes each per day.
He said: “What we had was a three-tonne per day rice mill. With the four units of 10 tonnes per day, we now have a combined 40 tonnes per day rice production mills.
“That means there will be an exponential increase in our rice production towards meeting our target of one million tonnes of rice production annually.”
Earlier, the four-man Korean delegation visited Governor Douye Diri, in his country home at Sampou, in Kolokuma/Opokuma Local Government Area.
During the visit, Gov. Diri expressed gratitude to the South Korean Government for donating the rice mills, farming tractors as well as for providing technical support to the state.
He said his administration is committed to strengthening the bilateral relations between the state and the South Korean in the area of agriculture.
“Bayelsa has huge potential for rice cultivation and yet we purchase rice. As a government, we decided to engage with the immediate past Korean ambassador to Nigeria and he put Bayelsa under the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) programme that supports sustainable development in developing countries.
“So we are now benefitting from this partnership in terms of provision of farming equipment such as rice mills and technical assistance,” the governor said.
Gov. Diri, who expressed his government’s vision in making the state a hub for rice production, urged the South Korean engineers to also explore the possibility of providing more technical support in training the state’s engineers to manufacture tractors and other farming equipment.
He said the prospect will go a long way in realising the vision to produce rice in commercial quantity for local consumption and export.
