Oyo State Soya Bean Chairman Chief Adegoke Adedeji Joseph has described the state of agricultural practice and mechanized activities in Nigeria as not too encouraging, despite some encouraging assistance from the Federal Government, but stressed that agriculture as a capital intensive occupation has not been favourable for the farmers to practise in Nigeria, as it is supposed to be, especially considering the area of collecting loans from the various banks in Nigeria, this he condemned rightly; seeing the farmers passing through some difficult moments, while trying to supply and fulfill some requirement from the banks, in respect of the collateral and whathaveyou..
This he accounted to be the things debarring the development of agriculture , hence here the government needs to let banks know that they should ease up the requirement , for the farmers to be eligible to obtain some loan facilities, that sometime happen to be for the benefit of the farmers, from the banks and the federal government, as it is being done in some advanced countries.
He now suggested that to improve on mechanized farming; government should import more equipment like tractors, harvesters, thresher etc, but commended that the government is helping to some degree about the acorn-grower, yet presumed that much encouragement is expected from the government as it has promised this year.
However, the Chairman for the commodity group for Soya beans; Chief Adegoke Adedeji Joseph vouched to say that All Farmers Assocciation of Nigeria has stood up to breaking and reducing the bottleneck in the release and distribution of any facility from the government, to make sure it actually reach the real farmers at the grassroots, which he defended that AFAN is really serious about it.
Therefore he advised the government to put up an initiatives and policies to encourage the youth to be fully involved in large scale mechanized farming, in order to help reduce the problem of unemployment in the country
On this he believes there would be much production of food and agricultural produce, aside the fact that the prices of the foodstuffs would come down drastically and naturally, but postulated it is compulsory the government creates an enabling environment, under which the farmers will be able to carry out their various agricultural activities, for their optimum profitability and the good of the nation and her citizenry.
Concerning the area in which he coordinates as the Soya beans Chairman; he pledged that much preparation is going on to make sure his members increase on their production of Soya beans, so as to meet the market demand and thus exemplified that Soya beans; as a durable seeds of multiple value chain is of high demand in the market, because of its richness in protein but clarified that extra importation of the seed is done to complement the home demand, but hopeful that there is auspicious future for more production of it .
Nevertheless he ascertained the fact that there is much prioritizing being done. through the Soya bean commodity group to attract more investors and farmers of Soya beans, while his group is educating and enlightening one another to grow more of the seeds, so as to meet both home demand and likely some exportation later in the future.
He therefore advised everybody to go into farming in whatever little way each and everyone can do it, either at a backyard or on a small piece of land growing coco-yam, bitter leaves, pepper, tomatoes, vegetables and others to supplement whatever it is being bought from the markets, this he denoted as an encouraging way to cultivate the habit of farming
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