Kogi to engage 100,000 youth in crops value chain — Commissioner

The Kogi Government said it will engage over 100,000 youths in various crops value chains under its Accelerated Agricultural Production programme this year.

The Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr Kehinde Oloruntoba, said this at a ministerial media briefing in Lokoja last Wednesday.

The briefing was organised by the Bureau of Information Services and Grassroots Sensitisation, in collaboration with the state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).

Oloruntoba listed various agricultural programmes of the state government, saying they all were aimed at attaining food sufficiency, economic diversification and agribusiness policy thrust of the Federal Government.

“Over 100,000 youth are to be fully engaged in various aspects of agriculture. It is against this backdrop that the allocation to Agriculture in this year’s budget was increased to N9 billion from N7.9bn in 2017,” he said.

He said the state would launch its ‘Confluence Fish’ brand within six months, saying that the fish would be grown and packaged in the state for the Nigerian market.

“We have abundant water resources and we have decided to start exploiting these resources. 1,000 youth would be engaged as fish farmers with 1,000 earthen ponds.

The commissioner said the state had started the domestication of the Federal Government’s Agriculture Sector Food Security and Nutrition Strategy (ASFSN), as part of efforts to fast-track nutrition-sensitive agricultural practice.

Another set of 1,000 youth would be empowered to engage in vegetable farming, he hinted. [NAN]