In furtherance of the bilateral relationship between both parties, a technical team from the Republic of South Korea has completed installation of modern rice processing mills in Bayelsa 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 has 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 would refine the process of rice production and that the state would require additional farming machinery such as dryer, per boiler and colour selector equipment to match the capacity of the milling machines.

The Bayelsa State Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Prof. Beke Sese, explained that the South Korean government donated to the state four units of rice mills with a production capacity of 10 tonnes per day each.

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.?

A four-man Korean delegation also visited the state governor, Senator Douye Diri, in his country home, Sampou, in Kolokuma/Opokuma Local Government Area.

During the visit, Governor Diri expressed gratitude to the Korean government for donating the rice mills, farming tractors as well as for providing technical support to the state.

He said his administration was committed to strengthening the bilateral relationship between the state and the Korean government in the area of agriculture.

According to the state?s helmsman, ?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.?

Senator Diri, who expressed his government?s vision in making the state a hub for rice production, urged the 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 would go a long way in realising the vision to produce rice in commercial quantity for local consumption and export.

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