CBN trains Ondo farmers on agribusiness for economic growth

As part of effort to boost Nigeria’s economy through agriculture and agribusiness, scores of farmers in Ondo State have been trained on how to use new innovations to facilitate growth in the agricultural sector.
The programme organised by the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), a subsidiary of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), is aimed at helping farmers come together as a group and be supported by providing various agricultural inputs needed.
Head of projects monitoring and remediation, NIRSAL, Ondo State, Akinyele Aluko, said the mission of the organisation was a risk sharing system for lending, under what is called enhanced anchor borrower programme.
The goal of NIRSAL is to trigger an agricultural industrialisation process through increased production and processing of the greater part of what is produced to boost economic earnings across the value chain, Aluko said.
He said NIRSAL’s corporate strategic business plan had reached the stage of executing various plans to fix the Agribusiness Value Chain and further deepen the attainment of its objectives by supporting the establishment of an off-take system whereby agricultural products were processed and marketed.
He explained further that over the years, so many agricultural intervention programmes had failed in Nigeria because there were no proper monitoring agency, therefore NIRSAL decided to make meaningful impact to succeed, hence the need to educate all those on the value chain was of utmost priority.
The programme has allowed participants to know the current agricultural innovation of the world, so that they can also apply the ideas of what they learnt for their agricultural business to be successful, he said.
Earlier in his address, he explained the importance of information communication technology (ICT) to the development of modern day farming, saying it had helped in reducing the level of illiteracy and make farming business lucrative and attractive.
A participant at the training programme, Oluwaseyi Adekunle, thanked the organiser, saying it was timely and enlightening, and had also taught him how practical farming could be accessible.
Another participant, Asikawili Patricia, appreciated NIRSAL for the knowledge-based training that had changed her scope about farming system, unlike what it used to be.
In his remarks, the CBN Akure director of finance, Gabriel Ajimoko, appreciated all the participants and wished them success in their future endeavours, and urged them to share with other farmers what they had learnt.