‘Capacity building crucial for sustainable farming, agribusinesses’

Training in agriculture is one of the most important factors for sustainable farming, as lack of adequate technical know-how has contributed to business failures in the agro-allied industries.

These were some of the submissions of the provost of the Federal College of Agriculture (FCA), Dr Babajide Adelekan, in Ibadan. Adelekan said the unemployment rate in Nigeria was becoming unbecoming, describing the situation as alarming.He, however, was optimistic that agriculture could create jobs, wealth and support industrial development if sincere efforts, deliberate investments and capacity developments are deployed to the sector.

He said these while inaugurating the 2018 edition of the Federal Government annual agricultural training on Monday. About 120 Nigerians were selected for the one-week capacity building to develop manpower for food security and sustainable means of livelihood. Adelekan said post-training surveys by the college had proven that past programmes had impacted positively on the lives of the participants.

“The programme has improved on the lives of youths, women and retirees in particular,” he said.The training, as usual, covers food production; fishery/processing; use/maintenance of agricultural machinery; honey production; cassava value chains development and snail farming.

The training coordinator, Dr Olutayo Adenekan, however, revealed that the number of participants was scaled down from about 200 to 120 because of very limited resources for this year’s edition of the training.He disclosed that the capacity building was at no cost to the participants and that free feeding, transport fares and training materials would be provided for the trainees.