Ondo State government has disclosed that it would partner Mitelo Integrated Farms at Ogbese in Akure North Local Government Are of the state.
The state Commissioner for Agriculture, Aribo Olayato stated this when on inspection visitation of the farm.
He revealed that the state government had designed a programme through which it would partner with farmers who see farming as a business and would give technical assistance and advice to them.
The collaboration would involve training of youths and farmers in capacity building for better knowledge on different segments of agriculture.
According to the commissioner, “I and my team are very happy with what we have seen. We are going to collaborate together. Apart from that, this is the kind of farm we want from the state. We want people who want to do things in large scale, commercial farming, those are the things that can take us out of starvation. That’s the area we are looking at in the state. We are looking at people like Mitelo farms to give us to that promiseland of food sufficiency.
“My team and I will meet with Mitelo farms to see how can partner and even send some people here for training.
While learning here, we could give them some stipends. After the training, the can go and replicate what they’ve seen here or probably wait and continue to work here.
“At Mitelo, they’ve seen farming as business that’s why they invested so much here. We need people who see farming as business and we will give them technical assistance and advice.
All farmers must see farming as a business. Anything you put money and expect profit in return is business.
In terms of money, we can introduce them to lenders. By the time they put their money into it, they will keep their eyes on it.
“We are willing to give commercial farmers land. We have land in the forest reserves. We have land that we have cleared that tractors could work on. All they need doing is to apply and we will look at their plans and release land for them for farming.”
Dr. Funmilayo Williams-Daudu, owner of the farms, told newsmen that she invited the commissioner for assessment and to see how the farms could collaborate with the state government to make life easy for the people on food production.
“We invited to see what we are doing here and at the same time to see how we can collaborate to make life easy for our people. We all know that foods are very expensive now.
“We invited him because he’s a man of vision and the government is ready to support people who are already trying their best to make life easy for others.
“What we do here as integrated farms, we do training, we produce, foods, crops, even crops that nobody would believe would grow in Nigeria. He has seen this and I believe he was impressed with what he had seen.
“Our workers know what they are doing. They have the technical knowhow. Our technical person, who is the manager, is actually from Songhai in Port Novo, with a lot of experience.
“We need fund because we want to expand more than this. We want to be able to train more people also and expand on some things that we are doing that are even doing well. We grow beafruit, carrot, cabbage, we grow all sorts of exotic vegetables that you don’t actually find around here.
“We’ve started collaboration with agric institutions. For example, we take IT students from University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Federal College of Agriculture, Akure. Some of the people we trained here are now on their own and are doing well. It’s not right to wait for white collar jobs and guys walking in the streets.
“Agriculture, apart from growing crops, agric has a lot of value chains. If you’re not producing, you’re buying and storing and selling. We have our curriculum ready for this year’s training.
We are ready to collaborate with any institution to make Nigeria better and ensure food security,” Dr. Williams-Daudu said.
The commissioner, therefore, promised to discuss with Dr.(Mrs.) Funmilayo Williams-Daudu, owner of the integrated farms on how the state government could partner with them.
