No doubt the
existence of our colleges of Agriculture in Moorplantation, Ibadan and Samaru,
Zaria actually may have called for celebration considering the numbers of
their years in establishments coupled the grandaunts they have chunked out over
the period.
Frankly
speaking, we understand the fact that the establishment of those institutes and
many others are quite in good order in view of the need for expertise in the
sector to do more profitable agricultural practices, but we must not be shied
to tell ourselves the truth that the purpose they are meant to achieve have not
been met with the present crude ways of agricultural practices in the country
if actually all the products from these colleges have been really there since
existence.
The wastages
or losses we record annually on food production running to billions of naira is
pure reflection of unprofessional agricultural practices by the people in the
farming and other value chains of the sector which kept us wondering the
purposes for these colleges after all these years.
This to our
mind actually calls for why these colleges need to be more repositioned to achieve
generation of well-trained and educated middle manpower in the practices of
agricultural production and productivity towards productive commercial agribusiness
economy and ecosystem of agronomics practices with soil management and new
technologies applications.
We are
calling the attention of the Government at all levels on how these colleges
should be exploited to capacity to enhance the productivity of the sector with
full capacity of revenue generations and employment creation especially by
experts on the fields that have received formal training from these institutes
thereby making the transferring of new technologies to grassroots becoming much
more easier with smarter youths taking over from older generation of farmers.
We want to echo here that there would not be need for much population in
farming sector with the experts in the sector because with their expertise
knowledge they will be able to achieve so much harvest on a small piece of land than
plenty people with limited knowledge occupying larger space of land for just few
harvest due to poor agronomics practices or applications.
This is
exactly our present predicament which Government must take seriously by using
these Institutes to reposition the agricultural space into the hands of younger
experts with more theories and practical knowledge in the value chains of
agricultural productivity after graduation. Heeding to this call will make
improved technologies transfer from many of our research Institutes much easier
as they will be talking to people who understand better the language the
researchers are speaking just as diversion of expertise knowledge from the
institutes will be well reduced to minimum.
Government should as matter of urgency begin
to deploy strategy whereby these set of people from these colleges are fully
engaged to carry out the services of extension, rather than taking those people
who are doing things that are not in any way related to agriculture.
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