Lagos To Exploit Potentials In Commercial Farming

THE Lagos State government has re-affirmed its commitment to the maximization of the State's potentials in the agricultural sector based on the priority given it as one of the 10-point agenda of the present administration.State Commissioner for Agriculture and Cooperatives, Prince Gbolahan Lawal gave the assurance on Thursday at the Sixth Joint FGN/World Bank Supervision Mission visit to Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP) in Lagos.He described the project as a laudable one, aimed at strengthening Agricultural production and processing, as well as, facilitating access to market for small and medium scale farmers in enterprises that the state has chosen like aquaculture, poultry and rice.'The state government's effort in Strategic Programme for Accelerated Agricultural Growth (SPAAG) aimed at stimulating agricultural production for all key staple food items using value chain approach. As a result of this initiative, the government of Lagos State has recently commissioned an Ultra Modern 20-ton capacity Rice Processing Centre at Imota in Ikorodu along with Poultry Estate and network of farm access roads,' he said.Lawal assures that the state will always contribute its quota to all Donor/World Bank Assisted Projects through regular payments of its counterpart contributions as well as provision of capable humanresources for the successful implementation of the projects.The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Dr. Olajide Basorun, said focus has to shift to Public-Private-Partnership approach to achieve agricultural sustainability.He noted that the state government wants to create enabling environment for private sector investment and appealed to all collaborating agencies to work together as a team for the successful implementation of the project.While giving the progress report of the project, the State Project Coordinator of CADP, Mr Bolaji Balogun said the state has given much attention to Agriculture through improved budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Agriculture from less than N500 million in 2008 to over N1.5 billion in 2012.He noted that such step was taken with a view to achieving the food security agenda of the present administration through food production.Balogun revealed that a total of 64 sub projects were fully implemented out of 71 received while 766 farmers have benefited.
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