NALDA executes Buhari’s order on youth engagement in farming

The Executive Secretary (ED) of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) Mr. Paul Ikonne has said that the Agency had already started to engage the Nigerian youths in farming. He said this during a  Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) 9 pm network news recently.

Ikonne said that in obedience to President Mohammadu Buhari, NALDA had plan to engage about 1,000 youth farmers across 774 local governments across Nigeria, in both crops and animals productions as land would be provided for interested and willing young people to attain their dream in farming adding that the first phase of the program will commence in about 18 states with six local government each until it cover the whole state.

Recall that during the launch of the National Young Farmers Scheme at the state house, Abuja, President Muhammadu Buhari directed all government agricultural ministries and agencies to step up the involvement of Nigerian youths in agriculture saying their contribution in the food productivity would galvanise the economy and employment in the country. 

The NALDA boss pointed out that his agency had already complied with president’s directive that all abandoned farm estates be retrieved to empower the young women and men into active farming to ensure food security.

He said that ‘’ so far we have done about 10,000 goats in some local government and in about six months, those ones will start giving birth and from there we will be able to do another set. For crops farming, we are going into cluster farming in size of 1,000 and 500 hectares in which each farmer will have one hectare to himself as NALDA will do the land preparation, make provision for inputs and off takers. What this means is that young farmers are guarantee of market for their farming activities.”

Speaking on recovery of his agency’s land at the states level he said that ‘’ we have reached out to governors in states where we have farm estates that are abandoned and some are already encroached into by other agencies and groups. We have written in this regards and we are getting their cooperation, and again we are receiving land donation from communities that want their youths to be engaged in farming like Imo state where we have got 5,000 hectares and also in Katsina.’’

He went further, “this is the time for communities to get their youths to be engaged in farming by making available land to create activities as our programme is community based to engage youths in crops farming, while in urban areas we will engage them in animal husbandry because we know there are no land to farm as some of them will be engaged in food processing.’’