The Akwa Ibom Government says it is planning a N20 billion public-private-partnership investment in agriculture to boost food production in the state.<\/p>\n
The Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Mr Godwin Afangideh, disclosed this on Wednesday in Uyo when a delegation of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) paid him a courtesy visit.<\/p>\n
The IFAD team was led by the UN agency’s Country Representative, Ms Atsuko Toda.<\/p>\n
Afangideh said that the state government would partner with `Songhai Farms’ to develop model farms in the three Senatorial Districts of the state.<\/p>\n
The commissioner explained that the farms would train rural farmers on modern farming techniques, adding that they would be assisted to replicate farms in their communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will mobilise the people into bigger ventures; we will partner investors to work with the rural people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way to increase food production is to pay attention to agriculture,\u201d Afangideh said.<\/p>\n
While pledging to address the issue of counterpart funding to the IFAD-assisted Community-Based Natural Resource Management Programme (CBNRMP), the commissioner advised the programme to scale up its activities.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Toda informed the commissioner that the team had inspected poultry farms, goatry and vegetable farms at Ibesikpo\/Asutan local government area of the state on a special mission and was impressed with the quality of the projects.<\/p>\n
\u201c We will like to see something larger, something commercial and something that depicts the transformation posture of the state,\u201d Toda urged.<\/p>\n
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the projects under the CBNRMP are co-sponsored by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). (NAN)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Akwa Ibom Government says it is planning a N20 billion public-private-partnership investment in agriculture to boost food production in the state. The Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Mr…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n