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Anthony Nwakaegho/NaijaAgroNet
The youths in Nigeria don’t want to take to commercial farming as
some of them still see agriculture from the traditional perspective that put
manual implements to use, according to the Lagos State Coordinator for
Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CAPD)
Mr Kehinde O. Ogunyinka.
In an exclusive interview with NaijaAgroNet, and said that the
youth that don’t want to go into commercial farming can go into marketing,
instead of crying day and night over unemployment.
Ogunyinka explained that the value chain of agriculture is so long
from input to land preparation, production, harvest, transportation and the
market, that even the old ones can still be engaged, while the cry for
unemployment will be greatly reduced if not eliminated.
“As it is today agricultural production has been simplified. We
have machineries to clear the forest/bush.
There are ploughing, hallowing
machines that will do the land preparation and the ridgers for ridges, planters
to do the planting and combined harvesters that will do the harvesting and
processing.
“So we have all these machines along the production line that will
make production of any farming activity easy and remove drudgery from the farm.
So the youths can be engaged, as the government under the auspices of Ministry
of Agriculture and Cooperative has engaged 400 youths in rice production
annually and they are doing well,” he said.
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