17th January, 2011
The Lagos State government has given 100 youths who participated in the state’s Agricultural Youth Empowerment Scheme, Agric-YES, N500 million loan to start up their agricultural businesses to boost food production.
The Agric-YES programme is aimed at training young farmers who are interested in agriculture to take it up as a career. Government intends to train at least 100 youths every six months in Epe area of Lagos State, southwest Nigeria.
After the training, they embark on six months industrial attachment in a farm settlement before being sent out to earn a living for themselves through agriculture.
Unfolding the vision of the state government for agriculture in 2011, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Dr. Yakub Basorun, disclosed that after the completion of the programme, government would give each of the participants land and a N5 million loan to commence business.
According to him, the N500 million loan for the last batch of participants is ready. “We want to ensure that people will not go to the farm and later run away. This scheme is aimed at rekindling the interest of youths in agriculture. Every six months, we intend to train 100 youths who will be empowered to practice agriculture.
“We are also planning to embark on estate initiative for agricultural programme this year. We are discouraging individual allocation of land and encouraging estates. We have a fish farm estate in Ikorodu and we are looking at establishing a poultry estate where farmers can invest,†he stated.
In the area of rice production, Basorun said the state government would target producing rice on 300 hectares of land this year as against the 200 hectares used last year, disclosing that the aim of the state government was to put in place ultra-modern rice factory before the end of the year.
“Before our Rice for job programme started, the yield on our land was 500kg per hectare. Now we reap two tons of rice per hectare and that was when we were producing on 200 hectares.
“Now that we are producing on 300 hectares, we expect to yield 600 tons of paddy (raw rice) rice annually and when processed, this can come up to about 400 tons of processed rice annually. This is equivalent to 8, 000 bags of rice per annum,†he stated. The permanent secretary, however, lamented the impact of global warming on agricultural yield, saying that in 2009, 40 per cent of rice planted was lost to drought.
“In 2010, we had lots of water which affected the yield. There was lots of warming which went on in the northern hemisphere and brought in lots of moisture in our land.
“What we are doing now is to introduce technology adaptable to our environment. We are trying to introduce machines and the rest to mitigate negative effect so that at the end of the day, if we can’t increase yield, we will not lose,†he added.
