Farmers, research organizations, entrepreneurs and technology developers across the country are set to showcase their products at the 17th national agricultural show in the coming weeks.
Chairman, National Agricultural Foundation, Architect Kabiru Ibrahim, told journalists in Abuja that this year’s events promises to create lots of value for the stastakeholders.
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He said this year’s show is expected to bring together all research institutes under the coordinator of Agricultural research council, states and local governments, inputs providers, entrepreneurs, new technologies developers and other actors in the sector.
Arc. Ibrahim appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to attend this year’s edition to boost the morale of farmers, adding that the last time a president attended the agric show was during President Obasanjo’s administration.
“I am asking Mr. President to spare the time and come. We have not had any president come to that show since Obasanjo. So, if President Tinubu, who is passionate for agriculture and all the windows that he has opened for the food system, finds time to come, even for one day, it will make a whole world of difference,” he said.
He said what the show was trying to do over the years was to bring to the fore the need for Nigeria’s agriculture to be showcased by smallholder farmers and large-scale producers, and people in processing come into one arena where they showcase what they have been able to do for others to see and to model.
“As far as we are concerned today in Nigeria, the engine room for production is actually the smallholder. Mechanization is yet to set in to such a level that we have fully commercialized farms or industrialized outfits.
“So even the theme of this year’s show will be empowering smallholder farmers to restore the value of what they do and to ensure productivity for the attainment of food security in Nigeria. So you can see that working with the smallholder farmers and the small-scale producers, we want to take Nigeria’s agri-food system to a sufficient level to be able to provide food sufficiency for even the envisaged population of Nigeria that will almost double by 2050. We think it is very important and prudent to bring out what we are going to do in about a month or so, because the show will be between 24th and 28th.
“And we have shifted it from the last two years to November because in October most of our farmers are still harvesting. But in December everybody will have time to come because judging from the last edition, we saw that the quality of participation was a lot higher than in the previous ones. And we hope that this year the quality will be even higher,” he said.
Daily Trust
