Let's use Horticultural crops to drive employment, says NIHORT ED

All season’s cultivation of horticultural crops is a veritable channel to mitigate the current pervasive youth’s unemployment in the country.

The above were the remarks of the Executive Director (ED) National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT) Dr. (Engr)Mohammed Lawal Attanda while on working tour to the field practical training being conducted for the recently admitted 2nd batch of the Horticultural Academy for Youths (HAY) where thirty new intakes are being trained on improved technologies in short duration crops on upland and lowland horticulture.

Dr. Mohammed Lawal Attanda reiterated the need for the three tiers of Governments to mainstream the use of horticultural crops to boost inclusive nutritional food security and job creation for the youths in Nigeria as he emphasized that horticultural crops have great role to play in achieving food and nutritional security and went further to add that capacity building of youths in the upland and lowland farming of highly nutritious crops such as tomato, pepper and varieties of vegetables will promote food security in the country.

He pointed out that the efforts of the Government through the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS) and its numerous departments and agencies towards commercial availability of rice, maize, wheat, and cassava would well be complimented with massive availability of pepper, tomato, and various types of vegetables to upscale cognitive and mental stability to both the youths and pregnant women in the country.

Further to the above, the ED submitted that vegetables production can be upscaled to generate more employment even as Nigeria has been described being low in the consumption of the crops by the United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

 NIHORT boss said that it is in this view that NIHORT has been training batches of youths in the best Agricultural practices in tomato, pepper, and vegetables like Ewedo and Shoko yokoto value chains so as to enhance commercial availability in view of high demand with premium.

 A member of the current batch of HAY, Mr. Sunday Abidemi who is a graduate of Yaba College of Technology affirmed to Foodfarmnews that he enrolled for the training with an aim to upscale his proficiency in the best agricultural practices of tomato and vegetable productions in view of their high demand and premium.

 Mr. Abidemi said " I intend to utilize the training to earn a living through profitable horticultural crops that take a very short duration of time to harvest for sale, and this includes tomato, pepper, vegetables"

 In the same vein, the program coordinator, HAY, Dr. Oyedele hinted that there was a need for FG to harness the opportunity in the training for job and wealth creations targeted towards achieving food security.

 She pointed that the numbers of the youths being trained can be expanded from thirty youths with more funding and provisions.