Ondo tourism: Akeredolu to boost agricultural sector with N3bn

The Ondo State Government says it is investing about N3 billion to boost cocoa and oil palm agriculture in the state. With such investments, the state is expected to achieve African biggest oil palm city and chocolate factory in Nigeria

the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to Ondo State Governor on Agriculture and Agro Allied Industries,Akin Olotu gave the hint recently while speaking on the plans of the Akeredolu’s administration on Agriculture in the state.

Olotu said that Governor Rotimi Akeredolu is convinced that Agriculture has to be private sector driven and is already working in that direction to impact on the life of the people.

According to the SSA, Ondo has a window of about 2 billion Naira for oil palm plantation in the state and another window of another 1 billion Naira for cocoa farmers in the state, adding that before this month runs out, the state will be raising 1 million seedlings of cocoa for transplanting in 2018.

“We are raising another 1million of oil palm seedlings to be transplanted in 2018; and the system is: we are encouraging different scales of operation, weather it is small scale, medium or large scales,

so, whichever might be your area of interest, you are well covered under the scheme and apart from that the other cocoa plantation, arrangements has been concluded for the 1,744 hectares of land for cocoa plantation that will enjoy tremendously from the 1million seedlings that we are planting.

The 1 million seedlings is not just for the plantation alone, it’s for the entire state; we have that plan and it’s going to be a continuous exercise;

so that we can reposition Ondo state in terms of cocoa quality, quantity and create jobs for our people and by this the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the state will improve”.

Speaking further on the government initiatives in agriculture, Olotu added: “Also, another initiative of our government, the rice on the ridges; is on.

We are looking at 10, 000 youths in different aspects of agriculture across the value chain; cocoa, oil palm, rice, pig, poultry, maize, cassava, just any area of their interest

so, as from tomorrow the jingle will be on all our radio stations, registration will be directly through manual and online so when they are fully registered, before the month runs out we’ll commence the generic training for them”.

“The generic training has to do with training that cut across agro-business. Immediately after the generic training, we proceed to specialized ones;

we want to teach people on fish keeping, we want to teach on aquaculture; and also on hydroponics which is planting without soil;

we’ve concluded arrangements and the training will take place first week of November, so you can grow vegetables, foliage for chicken, goat and even for pig’s, rice using very small space even within your house; so all those things are already in place”, he said.

To achieve their aim, the SSA said the first thing they did in the state was to systematically know and properly identify their farmers through an exercise called Know Your Farmers (KYF) in the state.

With that knowledge, they carried out a comprehensive registration for farmers in the state so that they can have their data.

Apart from that, Olotu said the state government equally brought in people that are interested in agriculture, but are not practically interested in it, a situation that has helped the government to have their data too.

He said, “Presently as I’m talking to you, it’s still been uploaded and processed at the ICT centre; that is phase 1; the second phase has to do with making our farmers to access funds i.e. to access credit and you’ll agree with me that CBN has a lot of windows which we have leveraged on;

with the commencement of this administration, Mr Governor wrote to express his interest in 5 major commodities and we are working with CBN and we are working with NICON”.

He pointed out that; presently several thousands of farmers in the state, especially cassava farmers, have benefitted and more are still benefiting from the anchor borrowers window.

He equally informed that Ondo State has a program that is known as ‘Three Crops Development Agenda,’ which is in 3 folds.

“Principally we are looking at Cocoa, Oil Palm and Cashew and this government is not just working on production, we are working on the entire value chain;

we want to make sure that we are producing good quality cocoa that we increase the size of what we are producing; the land area for production put into cultivation, not just that alone,

to increase our yield per time and to achieve these, training programs has been put in place to build the capacity of our farmers and just about two months ago, Mr Governor distributed cheque that is worth over Two Hundred Million naira to our farmers on cooperative basis and majority of them are into cassava and rice cultivation”.

Assuring that the state is also looking at the issue of mechanization, Olotu said, “we looked at the past administration and we discovered that each administration always buy tractors and within a short time the tractors are gone;

within 3 to 4 years the state will be back to zero level in terms of tractor; so, mechanized farmers do not have access to these tractors.

Mr. governor said okay, it has to be done in a sustainable way and what we have achieved so far is that we have negotiated with an engineering outfit that will bring tractors to the state and give these tractors to private individuals;

cooperative bodies and Agric Engineering Hiring Entrepreneurs ((AEHE) will come together; four to five graduates can come together to form a hiring company;

and we’ll have farmers attached to them and thereafter they would go out to prepare their land when the season is over they know that they have to put their tractors in order.”