Ogun partners agric investors on local sourcing of raw materials

As part of the Ogun State government efforts to boost industrial productivity and generate more employment opportunities through adoption of backward integration and local content, it has offered commercial land allocations to industrialists, especially agricultural investors, for the establishment of farms where raw materials would be sourced locally.

According to Ronke Sokefun, the state commissioner for agriculture, government has acquired land clearing and preparation equipment and has started opening up lands for commercial farming, as it has also concluded plans to partner investors operating in the state in the area of raw materials sourcing through massive commercial farming.

Speaking during a facility tour to Green Tech Industries Limited, a starch processing factory in Agbara Industrial Estate, Sokefun said the backward integration process would be mutually beneficial, by helping companies meet up with their installed production capacities at a cheaper rate and creating employment for those engaged to work on such farms.

Sokefun, who urged investors to take advantage of the availability of agricultural land for backward integration, declared that the partnership with agricultural investors was part of the efforts towards ensuring industrialisation through agriculture, assuring investors and farmers of government’s continued support towards producing adequate raw materials for industrial and domestic uses.

“It is the vision of this administration that Ogun State be seen as an industrial base in the nation. With our comparative advantage in agriculture, government has shown readiness to open up land at minimal cost and encourage commercial agriculture through the purchase of land clearing and preparation equipment,” she said.

Speaking earlier, Demola Akinode, general manager, Green Tech Industry, disclosed that the factory was working at 10 percent production capacity due to shortage of raw materials, but added that he was presently working with farmers within the locality in order to increase the supply of needed raw materials, and that he was already thinking of setting up farms where the cassava could be planted.