Mr. Hazeez Durosomo
A significant amount of the West African population suffers from food insecurity issues and food nutrition related diseases which could be avoided by simple agricultural practices and planting of Biofortified food crops. My organization is working on production of Biofortified food crops such as Vitamin A cassava, Vitamin A cassava processing, dissemination of vitamin A cassava stem cuttings and Aflatoxin free maize. We are currently working with products generated from the international institute of tropical agriculture to achieve our aims of commercial agriculture. By next year, we hope to diversify into the use of tissue culture and aeroponics systems for the rapid propagation of cassava, yams and orange fleshed sweet potato. This will expand our business as well as enable us to reach out to small holder and commercial farmers for the propagation of clean and viable planting materials.
Mr. Hazeez Durosomo
Government and NGO based initiatives often need strong structures to implement and sustain post capacity development initiatives. Sadly, the case has been mostly of weak structures generating results with mixed success. Challenges such as access to post capacity development intiatives are very limited with inadequate funds made worse by the heavy politics involved. More importantly, the question of marketing of agricultural produce, product storage and transport have not always been answered with weak government support.
The case study of a state government project in my country has led to my above conclusion. When government embark on capacity development initiatives by providing infrastructure, inadequate training, limited funding to a non-target audience with no non-governmental organisation involvement, the results are certain to provoke almost a no change in status quo. If training, infrastructure, funding were adequately provided to target youth participants with a true interest in Agriculture, other support in terms of storage, transport and marketing through collaborations with agro-allied or agricultural produce companies will fan the embers of youth engagement in agriculture and generate a much needed success. A missing link in my case study.
The youth can support each other by forming local cooperatives to generate and manage funds, creating agro-markets (online and site), forming local working groups for mentorship and embracing the advantages of Information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT has the potential to solve marketing concerns through E-Commerce platforms, provide access to agro-transport and assist in helping farmers meet export requirements of agricultural produce.
In conclusion, government and NGO support in capacity development of youth for agriculture must continue all the way from farm to consumer. A strong capacity development initiative should involve the trio of stakeholders which are youths, NGOs and government.