Agricultural sector needs more funding – Adodo

President of the National Youth Council of Nigeria, Solomon Adodo, has emphasised the need for improved funding and security in Nigeria’s agricultural sector.

He disclosed this during an interview with Channels TV on Thursday.

He emphasised that a major initiative to achieve agricultural success is to have designated agricultural cities and hubs mainly for the production of food crops.

He also stressed that the government should invest more in exporting food products rather than importing them.

Adodo said, “Agriculture is one of the low-hanging fruits; already there are initiatives to ensure that more funds are channelled into many programmes coming up, such as the Bank of Industry and the Bank of Agriculture.

“So there needs to be more funding for agriculture; there needs to be a security improvement; there needs to be a new model of agriculture, where there can be a sort of agricultural city, a complete productivity hub that has at its base agriculture and a vast stock of land across states.

“We can start with some pilots across the federation, beginning from the basic produce that we are getting. How can we get on the value chain, refine them, and then translate to other aspects of productivity, so that we can reverse the system we have already, where we are importing less of what we consume and producing more of what we consume? We should also be able to achieve a significant balance in trade, as we import from other countries while exporting food.”