The Federal Government on Tuesday said President Bola Tinubu was promoting the policies of mega farms or Settlement Estate to end the consistent farmers-harders clashes and also improve food production in the country.
The Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of National Agricultural Land Development Authority ( NALDA), Cornelius Adebayo, at a media parley with newsmen in Abuja, said the President wants to replicate what the late sege, Chief Obafemi Awolowo did, by creating effective hubs for farmers to thrive and harness the potential of agriculture.
Adebayo noted that the farmers’ settlement estate would provide a hub for easy access to farm inputs and effective mechanization and enable farmers to work effectively towards achieving food security.
He explained that the present administration was deploying enormous resources to increase food production for both consumption in the country and for export.
According to him, NALDA has already started implementing the policies for improved food production, with the establishment of some special farmers cluster in Epe-Sagamu for farmers within that catchment area, and is also extending the programme to other zones of the country.
Adebayo also disclosed that farmers across all the geopolitical zones would benefit from the projects implementation of NALDA, following the directives of President Tinubu that every part of the country must feel the impact of government’s investment in the sector.
NALDA’s Boss also disclosed that President Tinubu has equally designed a restoration programme for internally displaced persons ( IDPs) across the country to enable them to contribute to the current agricultural revolution.
He said, “ We want to concentrate resources on the projects we can measure and see the impact and that’s the project we call mega farms settlement or farmers estate, because we don’t have to reinvent again. My leader and boss, President Bola Tinubu, is a product of this school of thought. Our leader, Pa Awolowo, has this farm’s estate when he was in power.
”Looking at the problems we are facing in Nigeria today, we have a lot of farmers- herders issues and encroachments and fights. We realized that if we clusterized our farmers and put them in one place and protect them and provided the input where they are, we would have reduced the logistics problem, monitoring, and evaluation.
“If we have everyone in one place, we trench round the farms. When farmers are in clusters, you wont have the issue of giving inputes and someone is gointg to sell them , because they are in the same nplace, extension workers are close to you, the agronomy is top notch, and government is providing mechanization.
“What we are doing is to create the enabling environment and provide support for small holder farmers . because we need a lot of resources to do that, we have gone into strategic partnership with our institutional investors.
“Agriculture is not an intervention, but a business, and we have to treat it with that respect. We have to look for people who have the funds and the interests and the know-how.
“Restoration projects for over 3.5m displaced persons across the country. President Bola Tinubu believes in helping them to do what they have to do, so they can produce what they want to eat and also what we need as a country”,he added.
