Ekiti commissioner advises president elect on 50% Agric finding, state of emergency

The former commissioner of Agriculture, Ekiti state, Dr. Olabode Ayetoyi has advised the new incoming administration under the leadership of president elect, Alhaji Ahmed Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to increase annual budget for Agriculture by 40-50%, saying there is also a need for a state of emergency to be declared for the sector to progress.

 Dr. Olabode Ayetoyi said this yesterday during an interview session on TVC television program on business economy tagged his advice for new elect president of Nigeria in the repositioning of food productivity through the value chains system with mechanization to mobilize the youths into agriculture in Nigeria.

Dr. Ayetoyi said there is need for the new elect president to declare the state of emergency in partnership with states Government on agriculture in view of various challenges confronting the sector, adding that annual funding must be increased to 40-50% in order to be able to prioritize its development through the return of estate farms settlement with states' comparative advantages crops for the purpose of targeting the youths for employment through mechanization deployment.

Ayetoyi frowned at the low use of tractors in the practice of agriculture in view of our unabated growing population to the proportion of food production, pointed that the new government must be ready to prioritize agriculture through sufficient funding through the use of estates farming powered by out-growers model of checking food wastage of over 60% annually.

According to him " I am admonishing the new government to make the Agriculture budget to be more than 40-50%. The new administration should take into consideration agricultural potential of all the six geo political zones as God has blessed us with so many resources as we have the tree crops in the west with cocoa, palm oil, rubber etc, also in the North are groundnuts, maize, sesame, sorghum, wheat, cowpea etc. Money has to be made available to Agriculture. Government must stop making lip service to agriculture"

He went further saying that  " the era of less than 4% total budget to agriculture by the federal government which has contradicted the Maputo declaration where the African Head of states met and agreed on a minimum of 10% be set to fund agriculture. Government should know that less than 4% to agriculture cannot survive the rate of our population growth as Nigeria is growing at an alarming rate of 3.5% annually with food at 2.5%. What the Government needs to do is to pump money into the sector to make it sexy for youths' attraction. Land must be made available and the youths must be trained. Let the farm estates be made attractive with facilities and some stipends be given to youths as motivation"

On processing crops for preservation against wastages he said that " post harvest losses is as high as over 60-65%. And we must encourage processing of our agricultural produce to reduce it"