The Federal Government in conjunction with IFAD has commenced the training of rural communities farmers on ways to improve the quality of food being made available for the people.
The project is being handled by the Federal Ministries of Agriculture and Finance and IFAD.
The programme is designed in such a way that already established farmers by IFAD will now impart the knowledge into others selected in each community to increase and improve on the quality and quantity of food being consumed by the people.
At the training held at Bolorunduro, an agrarian community in Akure North local government area, the National Agro Business Coordinator of IFAD, Mrs. Antonia Ezenwa the idea was to ‘hear from those involved in the food production system at the local level’.
She said the rural farmers were engaged to ascertain what was not being done right, which was impeding the achievement of food security, adding that such input would be taken as their contribution to the national level.
In his contribution, the State Project Coordinator of IFAD, Mr. Olawale Ademola said ten local governments had been selected to participate in the first phase.
“We are covering 10 Communities per council area amounting to 100 Communities in total and largely 4,250 youths will be spread across 100 communities, mainly rural dwellers.
The United Nations is disturbed by the increasing rate at which diseases such as cancer, diabetes and the like are becoming rampant among our people in this part of the world.
The UN in partnership with Federal Government and NDDC now engaged IFAD to use its platform to reach rural farmers on board.
The model we use for this program is called Incubates and incubators approach,the incubators are the already established farmers that goes through agric value chain and the Incubates are the beneficiaries, the youths.
We have trained 250 Incubates across the 10 council areas,giving them #9,000 monthly stipend and also selected as well as trained 50 incubators.
Representatives of both the Federal Ministries of Agriculture and Finance as well as the Akure North Chairman also spoke at the event.
