NAN-AE-6
Advocacy
By Chidinma Agu
Lagos, Aug. 9, 2017 (NAN) An agriculturist, Mr Adeniyi Sola-Bunmi, on Wednesday advised the federal and state governments to intensify advocacy on agriculture so as to attract more people to go into crop growing.
Sola-Bunmi, who is National Coordinator, Youths in Agri-Business Development and Innovation (YABDI), gave the advice in Lagos in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
He said that the government had yet to provide incentives to attract people, especially youths to embrace food and livestock production.
“The government is faced with the challenge of advocacy.
“The communication gap is wide in terms of what the government wants to achieve in agriculture and the people it concerns to actually understand and key into agriculture.
“There is a need to make more people know the benefits of agriculture and also encourage them to go into it as a profession and means of livelihood.
“It will really help if many people go into farming and various aspects of agriculture,’’ he said.
Sola-Bunmi said that the government ought to initiate pragmatic plans to encourage more people to engage in farming.
He noted that the current market situation revealed that the demand for foodstuffs and agricultural produce was more than the supply.
“Only few people produce what majority of the population are eating, while the population keeps increasing at an alarming rate,’’ he said.
Sola-Bunmi noted that the few people who were involved in farming were basically into subsistence farming which could not cater for the food needs if the increasing population.
He said that the increase in population partly accounted for the high cost of foodstuffs and agriculture produce in the market.
He underscored the need to change the scenario in order to force the market prices of foodstuffs and agriculture produce to come down.
He said that farmers needed encouragement and incentives from the government to improve their output and go into commercial agriculture to drive the process. (NAN)
ACA/MOL/OOK
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Edited by Mustapha Lamidi and Dayo Komolafe