Lagos state government has called for the incorporation of students at all levels into agriculture in order to secure the food system of Nigeria.
State Commissioner of Agriculture, Ms. Abisola Olusanya made the statement during a quiz competition organised for the students in the state as part of activities to celebrate this year’s World Food Day.
The Ministry of Agriculture earlier embarked on a Road Walk awareness campaign ahead of the Grand finale of the week long event holding on 16th of October, 2023, at the Police College, Ikeja.
Olusanya, while engaging students before the Agric-based competition, mentioned that the state is providing numerous platforms that can enable them to thrive in the profession.
Technology
The Commissioner said that agriculture transcends mere business of cutlass and hoes, stressing that technology is now the game changer as the state would welcome young minds to come on board.
“The idea of the quiz competition is to expose you to the fact that agriculture is much more than what you think it is, and there is a role for everybody to play. Agriculture is embedded in our everyday Ife, from your cream, dairy, car tyres, and beverages are all made from agriculture.
The way you know agriculture is much more than just going into a farm, getting a cutlass, digging the ground, and cutting something. It cuts across several value chains.”
“Truly, you stand a chance to gain a lot in the sector and we need young minds to get interested in agriculture and our government is providing the ambience to showcase the sector in such away that it will be of interest to you.” she said
Speaking on the theme of this year’s World Food Day, “Water is life, Water is food, it leave no one behind, Olusanya explained that water is an essential commodity particularly to Agriculture and the scarce resource must be well conserved.”
Olusanya said, “The truth of the matter is that the requirement for water by the Agricultural sector is huge, and I believe that the sector will utilise almost forty per cent of water available for its use.
“It therefore necessitates that in agriculture we find a way around recycling the use of water, recirculating the use of water, such that there is not enough water for use by households for cooking, cleaning and for any other thing that might be required particularly around human consumption.”
“Without water truly, there will be no life, and even as students, effective utilisation of water is important, and the onus lies on you to also teach your siblings and parents to conserve water.”
She added that the Ministry of Agriculture has been running several programmes tilted towards bringing the student’s knowledge on the benefits of studying agriculture and of being a part of the food system.
According to her “We run a summer school programme every year and its usually every month of August and we also have Lagos Agric Scholars programme where we set up a smart system of poultry aquaculture and horticulture in schools.
“We also run several other initiatives with different multilateral and bilateral agencies just trying to push the narratives that agriculture is not a backwards sector.”
Catch Them Young
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Agriculture, Dr. Oluwarotimi Fashola emphasised the need for students to be encouraged and supported to go into agriculture early in life so that they can learn all its intricacies.
He urged the students to choose any branch of agriculture with a promise that they can attain any height of their visions and not look at agriculture as that back-breaking activities.
“If you choose any branch of agriculture, there are no heights you can’t attain in life. You are the one who can stop yourself, not the profession. When I was growing, the sound was without cutlass and hoes, farming incomplete, but now it’s not like that. Now, tractors, information technology, and artificial intelligence can all be used in agriculture
“I am looking for some of you who will transform Agriculture through Artificial intelligence to develop mobile application that would be used to revolutionised Agriculture in Nigeria and the world.
We need to feed the nation with over 200 million, and we can not achieve that with just using cutlass and hoes.”
He, however, urged the students to use the same energy they put into the creative industry into agriculture.
Shakirat Sadiq
