OVER fifty consumer farmers drawn from various local governnent areas in Oyo State have been trained on how to explore the opportunities abound in cassava.
The training was put together by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in collaboration with the Federal Cooperative College, Kaduna and Boayol International Company Limited.
Speaking with the Nigeria Tribune shortly after the opening ceremony of the two-day training which held at Lafia Hotel, Apata, Ibadan, the keynote speaker, who is the Country Director, Harvestplus Nigeria, Paul Ilona, said:”Nigeria will be sixty years old next year and the question will be how far have we really gone building a future for this country.
“If we are to build a future for this country, one key area of focus should be agriculture and if we look back to the last forty years, you will remember the groundnut pyramid and you will recollect that Nigeria took the lead in crop production.
“The question now is that to what extent have we sustained agriculture in Nigeria. And sustaining agriculture should not come just for the financial susbsistence alone. Unless we continue to build a new generatyion of farmers in this country then our teeming population will not be able to meet their food requirement and that is why we are here today to train these consumer farmers on how to explore cassava even more than they can imagine.” He concluded.
Mr Sunday Babalola, who spoke on Boayol International Company Limited, said:”The training is not about cassava farming alone. It is all about agribusiness, things that you can do from your farms which will fetch you reasonable amount of money.”
Babalola, informed that participants would at the end of the training get empowered with a sum of money to boost their farm production as well as cassava stems. “We are focusing on cassava value chain development that is what are other things you can get from cassava apart from the usual garri, elubo and all that. And that is why we have expert here to do justice to that.
A member of the House of Representatives, Honourable Akeem Adeyemi, who instrumental to how the training was brought to Ibadan, while addressing participants through Mr Ishola Abdulahi, who represented him on the occasion urged the them to utilise the knowledge acquired during the training and make judicious use of the money given to them to boost their farming practice.
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