By Bilesanmi Abayomi
Some Agriculture experts in Lagos have urged unemployed youths to take up the small-scale farming in their locality to address the issue of shortage of food due to the insecurity ravaging the country.
Mrs Oluremi Oluwalogbon, member of a team in the School of Politics, Policy and Governance (SPPG) made this known during the sensitisation programme on Agriculture held in Lagos.
The School of Politics, Policy and Governance (SPPG) is a non-governmental organisation that has affiliation in the agriculture sector.
Oluwalogbon, the APC former Aspirant of Kosofe Federal Constituency, said the team would be organising a food security conference in Lagos to address the issue of food insecurity to ensure that the country was food secure.
She noted that presently the country had more than 55 per cent of unemployed youths so the conference would ensure that the youth take up agriculture as a means of livelihood.
“Like I said our youths, they are saying they don’t want to work on the farm, but that is not the issue because there are different upbringing and I still remembered when I go to Ijebu for Christmas, I use to see farmers going to the farm so am used to it.
“Sadly, I don’t think my son has ever seen somebody going to the farm, so today you can’t reconcile them to the olden farming tools.
” However, you can show them the value chain in Agriculture from planting to harvesting to packaging and selling of the commodities, so there are many things to do as a youths.
“So my advice to the youths in the country is that we have a issue right now, we are in a dire need to secure food because people don’t secure food in their household.
“Right now, we have seven trillion naira that was used to import food, I have the statistics, this is not okay at all.
“We can farm, our youths can do so much more, they can take it to the next level and innovate around agriculture.
This is not about farming, rearing chicken or goat alone, there are research, data and so more that can bring gainful employment for the youths in the agriculture chain,” she said
Oluwalogbon said the government had done well because the Bank of Agriculture has actually help a number of people and she knew that there were also funds available in the world to aid agriculture.
The agriculture expert said recently Dano had a collaboration with a Fan Milk to open the milk production at Egbeda in Lagos.
She said not only that, at Egbeda now, the company was training people on how to have a model farming which they want to replicates in other part of the states.
Oluwalogbon said: “So if you go there for your training, they will teach you how to have such farm where you have a maximum output and those are the thing the government is also going here.
“I know Ogun State government is much involved in that project and they are also coming to Lagos State now.
“Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos is also doing a lot of work around the Epe-Ilara Axis, if you go there, you will be pleasantly surprised at the plants they have for Agriculture around that axis.”
According to her, we have to do things on the South West states now because farmers can no longer go to farm because Book haram is asking them for levies before they can farm.
Speaking, Mrs Adenike Odunuga, Team Lead of SPPG said the propose of the conference was to create awareness for the youths because they are the strength of the nation and the farmers population were now ageing.
Odunuga added the conference would create awareness on food security and the opportunity the youth could take up within the agricultural business space.
She noted that many people had heard about smart agriculture and farming around their compound and cultivating different kind of farm produce so that they were able to produce what could fetch them high income.
“If you are able to produce any of the fruits, they can get high income. If you don’t want to be a farmer you can be a fruit processor, apply your little knowledge of technology and little marketing.
“You can even be processing the fruit in your house, and we are going to show you the dehydrate and dehydration processing especially if you want to put a an emphasis on food dehydration.
“This is because if you dehydrate a food it makes the food to stay longer and have a higher shelf life.
“So we want to use it to combat the wastage and how we can empower them and our intention is to create wealth for our teeming youths,” she said.
Odunuga said after the training, the youths that connect with them now, they would continue with them in terms of empowering them with necessary tools.
She said they would have a collaborators so that this youths had other linkages to people that could support them.
According to it, this is not just ordinary seminar because we are set to make impact and we will be training about 1000 youths with equipment in the next two to three years.
Odunuga said they would give them access where they were not able to do it, they could do it and they would partner with banks, international funding agencies so they won’t just be saying this youths were lazy.
The expert said she acknowledged the insecurity and that was why they were given the temporary options to it and one of the options was the food scrapping which wae by producing food within their yard.
According to her, the solution we are proposing will solve the temporarily challenge of insecurity in the forest even when the forest is safer, it can still be sustainable.
In his words, the Team Manager of the project, Mr Michael Igwe urged the youth to take up the space in their house, to begin to grow yam, potatoes and all sorts of in bags.
Igwe said when the had lots of young ones producing food even if the ones they eat, the needs to go to the market to buy would begin to reduce.
According to him, If the need to go to the market is reducing, it also means that what the Federal Government spent in importing food will also reduced.
He said: “These are verifiable facts, if we begin to do all of these, you will see that the one dollar to N700 will begin to come down.
“What Nigerians seems to understand is that outside petroleum products, the federal government spends a lot of money on food.
“We spend money buying foods from Ghana, Benin Republic and importing all sorts of foods from all parts of the world. As at the last count we have 24 hectres of land that are unfarm, these are bushes .
Igwe said in most of these countries, those bushes were farm land because they had ranches all over and that was why food wae the cheapest thing they could actually get.
He said the conference was organised to encourage young people to adopt and embrace smart agriculture because it would help.
Igwe said farmers could also develop their own app and let the people in their vicinity know that they were involved in farm produce.
According to him, this will saves the money transporting those items to the market places and these are little places that technology is doing so much to empower both the producers and sellers.