Lagos acquires farms at Osogbo for food sufficiency

Lagos State Government has acquired 84 hectares of land in Osogbo, Osun State with the aim of cultivating various types of crops to produce food to meet the immediate needs of the residents of the State.

The Commissioner for Agriculture in Lagos, Prince Gbolahan Lawal disclosed in Lagos that the Osogbo Farms would also serve as the aggregation center for the State Government’s collaborative efforts with the DAWN States exporting produce to other States of the federation and foreign countries.

Lawal noted that the Osogbo Farms would forestall the shortage of food as well as ensure food security for the ever-increasing population of the State which has limited land for agricultural purposes due to its coastal nature.

“Lagos State with a population in excess of 21 million people and a daily influx of people from diverse places has serious agricultural land constraints and being a coastal State, the availability of land for agriculture has been drastically reduced due to urbanisation,” Prince Lawal averred.

He explained that due to the envisaged increase in activities along the Epe-Lekki corridor on completion of the Free Trade Zone, the State government intends to build another abattoir within the axis to cater for the meat needs of residents along Lekki expressway.

He hinted of plans to put in place an Agric Business Application that would not only put a monetary value to everything done in the Ministry but would also support the agriculture platform by aggregating everything and everybody along the value chain in the State.

According to the Commissioner, the Agribusiness App is a viable strategy that would transform the agriculture sector by smoothening the way for both old and new as well as young farmer-entrants in an environment where start-ups can be nurtured and allowed to flourish.

“Some of the objectives of the App are that it will groom start up entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises and agrotech innovators, among others, in addition to promoting the establishment of agribusiness ventures through a vast pool of commercially viable agro-technology initiatives from the research and development institutes,” he said.