Lagos calls for partnership to boost low food productivity, says Agric commissioner

The Lagos state commissioner for Agriculture, Mrs. Abisola Olusanya has asked for more investors in Agriculture to see the state as a business centre to invest towards boosting low food productivity in meat and fish value chains. This was disclosed in an interview during the business news on Television Continental (TVC) Breakfast last week Monday.

Olusanya who described the food system of Lagos as being vulnerable due to increasing influx of people that did not commensurate to food availability, pointed the need for private partnership to boost sustainable productivity that would ensure food security in the state.

Speaking on livestock productivity, she said that investors should take the advantage of the huge market in the state where 50% of nation’s total herds of cattle figured at 3.5mllion is being consumed on daily basis, stressed that investors must harness the opportunity to making more money.

On fish, the Agric commissioner said there was production deficit of over 50%, saying that ‘’Lagosians demand well over 400,000metric tons of fish, but as a state we are just producing roughly about 174,000 metric tons of fish, so it goes to show that the deficit is much higher than what we are able to produce. So if there were this opportunity, then i wonder why are people not taking up that space to invest and make good money from it’’

She added that the state Government is determined to ensure a friendly environment that would ease ways of doing business for any interested investor in the food productivity value chains of meat with economic value of N328 billion annually, saying that all meat being consumed in the state are from the north and other nations like Togo and Cameroon, just as she mentioned the need for more abattoirs in order to enhance hygienic condition.

On youth unemployment, she said  ‘’ For our youth who do not have experience in Agriculture, that is why we had the Lagos Agropreneurship Program (LAP) with facilities in Aragba Epe and Songhai in Badagry. We are actually working to revamp and hoping to commission by the month of June so as to get more youths involved in Agriculture.  What we are also trying to do is to ensure bringing everyone into the agric space in order to increase food productivity. If as a State we say that our food security is currently between 15 to 20%, and we want to up this numbers to about 50% within the next 3 to 5 years, it will only make sense to start to focus on those who studied Agriculture in school to be able to enable them practise what they had studied. In that way, we will be able to scale up faster’’