Agric’ll be biggest industry in Osun – Aregbesola

The Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has said that the overriding objective of his administration is to make agriculture the biggest viable industry in the state.
This was as he revealed that his government is also working relentlessly to make sure that farmers in the state are the core of wealth creation and productive agents of empowerment.
Aregbesola said this during the Osun “Farmers’ Day With Ogbeni”, held at the Bola Ige House, Government Secretariat, Osogbo.
He also distributed farming inputs worth over N80 million to farmers in the state.
The governor said that with the discovery of the agrarian nature and the enormous agricultural potentials in the state, the administration came up with the Six-Point-Integral-Action Plan, with agriculture as a major plank.
Aregbesola said: “Our agricultural policy is squarely focused on you, the farmers in Osun, hence the theme of this interactive session: ‘Imagine the World Without Farmers’.
“We are convinced that increased agricultural productivity is a pre-condition for the emergence of industrial development as well as the foundation stone for economic growth.
“Hence, we initiated programmes that enable subsistence farmers to multiply their production through expansion of their farming capacities, improve on the techniques of farming and package their goods for marketing in bigger markets like the ones in Lagos State.”
Aregbesola stated that in the last two years, government has given quality attention to the upgrading of rural infrastructure in Iwo, Mokore, Ago-Owu, and Esa-Oke – four of the nine farm settlements in the state.
A total of 77.2 kilometres of access/feeder roads were constructed.
According to Aregbesola, the implementation strategy evolved by his administration to achieve the O’REAP components is the provision of support to the various farmer cooperative groups spread across the State of Osun.
He noted that about 28 cooperative groups have received support from the present administration to plant 17 kilometres stretch of maize.
Besides, more than 150 hectares of farmland were cleared, prepared and allocated to 30 farmers in Iwo and Mokore farm settlements for the production of arable crops.
And to deepen support for farmers, he continued, about N529 million in loans were disbursed to 260 farmers’ cooperative groups in 2011 and 2012, an intervention he said generated 4,813 direct jobs with 2,600 indirect jobs.
On input supply, Aregbesola said the state procured and distributed to farmers 2,160. 75 metric tons of fertiliser; 10.242 metric tons of maize seeds; 2,723 litres of liquid herbicides; 89 tubes of insecticides; and 24.16kg of fungicides.
Other distributed items include 884 units of minor equipment, and 16,603 bundles of improved cassava cuttings. All these were supplied at highly subsidised prices to further increase the scale of production of our farmers.
He informed that as a safety catch to check the menace of post-harvest losses, a 500-metric-tonne-capacity warehouse has been built in Osogbo, with seven other mini-warehouses in other parts of the state complemented by on-farm storage facilities.
He added that one tonne-capacity cargo tricycles was distributed to seven O’YES cadets, with more to be made available, for haulage of farm produce.
He continued: “The unprecedented development that our administration has recorded so far in the agricultural sector has been made possible through the well-packaged and well-received agricultural programme, Osun Rural Enterprise and Agricultural Programme, O’REAP.
“The four major components of the programme are: Farm Estate Development, Farmer Cooperative Support, Agricultural Land Expansion, and Large scale Agriculture.”