International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), has commended Ogun State Government for taking a step further in addressing poverty in the rural areas and ensuring food security for the State
The Nigeria Country Director for IFAD ,Mrs. Dede Ekwe who was received by the Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Tokunbo Talabi in his office at Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, lauded the state for improvimg on its rice yield by 47 percent and cassava by 61 percent respectively.
Mrs. Ekwe said her visit to the State was to take stock of the programmes and the achievements made so far, as well as further discuss the implementation support vision which was in conjunction with the Federal Government to boost the value-chain development programmes in agricultural production.
The Country Director said “the food security programme has been successful due to the commitment of the Federal and State governments. We went to the field and we saw the passion of the farmers who worked hard to leverage the support, commending them for making their farm produce more competitive, thereby contributing to food security and creating jobs.
Ekwe noted that the meeting with Mr. Talabi was to look into further ways to improve scale up productivity, assuring that IFAD was committed to strengthening productivity and farmers’ yields through training and retraining for food security.
The IFAD Director assured that “we will provide more inputs for farmers, foster small-scale processing, give equipment to do the processing, and connect them to the market, as IFAD is ready to facilitate the linkage between the farmers and international partners who are willing to buy the produce from the farmers’’.
Also at the meeting were the Commissioner for Finance and Chief Economic Adviser to the Governor, Mr. Dapo Okubadejo, his counterpart in the Ministry of Budget and Planning, Mr. Laolu Olabimtan, as well as Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr. Adeola Odedina, represented by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Dotun Sorunke.
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