Boosting agriculture in Ekiti with bank’s partnership

As the country reverses years of neglect of its farming industry, pushing agriculture as its new frontier for growth, Ekiti State is making strides to boost agriculture development in the state. In furtherance of the Kayode Fayemi-led government’s agenda to drive agribusiness and agro-industrial revolution in the state and transform the state to a modern state comparable with any other state in Nigeria and indeed, in the world, the government has entered into partnership with the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) to revitalise co-operative development.

The partnership is with a view to using the co-operative federalism model as an alternative vehicle for reaching grassroots communities and local socio-economic activities.

On the occasion of the distribution of N300 million cheques to 82 benefiting communities in the first phase of the Grants In-Aid to the communities on self-help projects, the state government would shore up the co-operative societies with N300 million while the BoA would provide another N300 million.

According to Fayemi, the government is undertaking several other rural development and community empowerment projects to the tune of N3.2 billion, spanning rural access roads to farm settlements, another round of 5-kilometre roads in each of our 16 local governments, and ultra-modern markets, among others.

The BoA partnership is expected to boost agriculture in the state, known to be buoyant in agriculture, with the Northeast cocoa being its leading cash crop. The state accounted for over 40 percent of the cocoa products of the then old Western Region.

As part of the government’s ‘Road Map to Recovery,’ the government gives premium to agriculture development as it is driving prosperity in the state through agribusiness operations that could eradicate economic poverty and essentially drive achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The government has taken the bold step of recognising agriculture as a business, focusing on developing platforms that will transform the current situation of subsistence low productivity farming and processing into modernised, commercial and technological driven operations that will guarantee massive job and wealth creation to the people.

Key development partners such as the World Bank, UNDP, DFID, UNIDO, and other organisations are facilitating these processes for the state.

The agriculture revolution is expected to bring sustained investment into the entire agribusiness value chain, which, in turn, will raise productivity and yields, improve competitiveness and increase profits in the rural economies like ours.

The state is laced with some of the richest agricultural lands in Africa and huge potential to develop a sustainable commercial farming sector with significant economic gains for the state and the Nigerian economy. It enjoys favourable climates and irrigated agriculture, livestock production and resource for inland fisheries.

The food crops cultivated in the state include cassava, maize, yam and vegetables, while the cash crops include cocoa, palm oil, cotton, banana/plantain and fruits such as cashew. “The transformation of agriculture in Nigeria is a centrepiece of the economic transformation agenda of my government,” President Goodluck Jonathan, said recently at a conference in Abuja. “The recent discovery of shale oil and gas means we can no longer depend solely on oil to drive the economy.”

Nigeria is targeting $10 billion of investment in farming to boost food production by 2015, Akinwunmi Adesina, agriculture minister, said in a May 10 interview. Food production rose by about 8 million tons in 2012, about 40 percent of a four-year objective, according to the agriculture ministry.