World Bank, Lagos spend N1.35bn on farming activities

Efforts of the Lagos State Government to enhance food production have been boosted by the World Bank, with both of them spending N1.35bn on different agricultural projects across the state.

The money is spread on the provision of infrastructure such as access roads, establishment of the Agricultural Cooperatives Empowerment Scheme, provision of refrigerated meat vans, and establishment of a vegetable estate in Iyaafin, Badagry; poultry estate in Erikorodu, Ikorodu, and fish farm estate in Epe.

The financial facility, which is aimed at boosting food production and security for farmers, according to a statement, is being handled by the Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives.

On its part, the ministry has put in place some measures to achieve the goal, including upgrade of existing and creation of new agricultural estates, provision of access road networks and other initiatives to boost farming.

The statement said that Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Mr. Yakub Bashorun, noted during a recent tour of the estates that the projects were part of efforts to upgrade and assist farmers in terms of facilitating easy infrastructure to enhance their productivity.

He said that the various projects were also aimed at creating job opportunities and at the same time creating an enabling environment whereby farming would not only be attractive, but would also be made easy.

According to him, the state is interested in revamping agriculture with the hope of making cooperative societies into viable and formidable instrument for stakeholders to use to enhance their productivity.

“It’s our intention to put in place a system by which the stakeholders in the farming sector would be able to sustain our food security initiative, raising small scale farming to medium scale, and from medium to large scale in their operations,” Bashorun said.

He noted that development of farm roads was aimed at mitigating the problem of transportation of farm produce to the final consumers in a way that farmers would not incur losses as a result of transportation problems.

The ministry, through the Commercial Agricultural Development Project, has also embarked on the construction of 20 kilometres of roads that spreads across the five administrative divisions in the state. These are Epe, Ikorodu, Badagry, Ikeja, and Lagos Island/Mainland.

Bashorun said, “Agriculture has the greatest opportunity to job creation in any enterprise, and the need to create this opportunity has made the state government to create a scheme called, Youth Empowerment Scheme, to train and orientate prospective farmers to know the nitty-gritty of farming on a higher level.”

Source : Punch