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Lagos APPEALS affirms commitment to farmers’ productivity

By Gbenga Akinfenwa
22 March 2020   |   3:38 am
The Lagos State Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS) Project said it is committed to enhancing the productivity of farmers across the three different value chains

Farm. Photo; PEXELS

Launches Farm Record Handbook, e-Record Portal

The Lagos State Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS) Project said it is committed to enhancing the productivity of farmers across the three different value chains – rice, poultry and aquaculture.

State Project Coordinator, Oluranti Sagoe-Oviebo, said this at a stakeholders’ workshop, held at Agege, Lagos, where the Farm Record Handbook and the e-record portal was launched for farmers.

The Farm Record Handbook and e-record portal is an application for collecting, organising and categorising records to enhance good farm management, preservation, retrieval, use and disposition, among other uses.

Oluranti Sagoe-Oviebo said one of the purposes of the workshop was to link farmers to financial institutions, to get support for their farming activities with single-digit interest loan.

She said: “We all know that for your productivity to be enhanced, there are things that you must have in place. One of those things is that you must have records. Unfortunately, record-keeping is one thing most farmers find very difficult to do. Today, we are going to launch our record books across the three value chains.

“But beyond that, the world is changing, it’s an evolving generation; everyone is going high-tech. We want to introduce to you today, the e-record keeping format so that you can keep your record even on your own laptop, phone and computers.

“For any bank or financial institution to give any second-level finance assistance, there has to be evidence of record. We don’t want our farmers to miss out, we don’t want them to lose out and that is one of the things that prompted us to say every farmer must have a record.”

The Commissioner for Agriculture, Prince Gbolahan Lawal, who described farm record keeping as critical to overall farm management and sustainable profitability, said good record-keeping would help farmers plan and do realistic forecasting, which is critical to overall farm management and sustainable profitability.

“Profitability in our farming business is one of the key concerns to us as administrators and promotion of farmers’ prosperity is of paramount interest, especially for our small and medium-scale farmers in the state,” he said.

The commissioner said the Lagos APPEALS project design was in line with the Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP: 2016, 2020) and would directly contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

He said this would be achieved through ensuring food security, support to export opportunities, as well as support to livelihood improvement.

“I want to implore us all to be financial managers by keeping accurate farm records and establishing and maintaining a proven record-keeping system. Past experience has shown that farmers who keep records are usually successful farmers,” Lawal said.

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