Abstract
The paper provides a historical document on rice production in Doma Local Government Area, Nasarawa State from 1996-2023. Rice is important in Nigeria for several reasons. It is a staple for most of the peoples in the country and a major contributor to internal and sub-regional trade. The understanding by Doma farmers that rice can easily be cultivated in area with low soil fertility and its huge array of varieties encourages them to continue to cultivate rice no matter the constraints faced. Rice production level before now have not been able to achieve stability despite the huge capital injection from World Bank loans to myriads of government’s interventionist programmes since 1966. This is due to poor management of water resources and irrigation system in the area, farmers’ inability to access credit facilities, inability to improved seed varieties, low farm inputs and low patronage of agro allied chemicals. Despite these challenges, rice production continues to assumes salient agricultural activity in Doma contributing significantly to food security and economic livelihood of the people. However, the thrust of this paper is on hectares of land cultivated, production levels in metric tonnes and yield production in metric tonnes per hectare. The paper adopts agricultural development theory using resource exploitation and location models emphasising increase in agricultural potential in driving economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve food security, particularly in developing countries. This paper argues that, the recent upsurge in rice production is attributed to the presence of Olam company cultivating over ten thousand hectares, the introduction of Olam’s nucleus out growers scheme in 2012, the rise of farm settlement across Doma attracting migrant labours from different parts of the country and the adequate uses of agro allied chemicals. The paper adopts multi-disciplinary approach based on historical method of using both primary and secondary sources of data. Collected data were qualitatively analysed.