The Ekiti State Government on Tuesday said it is targeting 200,000 farmers for commercial livestock and is aiming to create 1.5 million jobs through the Livestock Productivity and Resilience Enhancement Project (L-PRES).
It also said it would boost livestock productivity, improve resilience, and commercialise selected value chain initiatives, including cluster formation across the state.
The state Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, Ebenezer Boluwade, said this at the five-day Training Workshop on Productivity and Technology Adoption Survey in Ado Ekiti.
L-PRES is a World Bank-supported project being implemented across 20 states of the federation in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
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The project is expected to directly benefit 1.43 million farmers beneficiaries (of which 30 per cent would be women) in Nigeria.
The project focuses on enhancing livestock productivity, making them more resilient to various challenges like disease and climate change.
Mr Ebenezer, represented by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Ebenezer Ojo, said the state focuses on four selected livestock value chains: dairy/beef, sheep/goat, piggery and poultry (broiler and eggs production).
He urged all the relevant value chain actors/players to work in synergy with other ancillary agribusinesses to ensure sustainable food security and peaceful co-existence in Ekiti State.
“The livestock sub-sector is wide and presents some promising production opportunities in our state, the Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support (L-PRES) Project is supporting measures that will help the livestock farmers and ancillary agribusinesses mitigate and increase adaptive measures to modernise agricultural practices and resilience through improved innovation and good practices,” Mr Ebenezer said.
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In his remarks, the L-PRES coordinator in Ekiti, Olayinka Adedipe, said it currently operates in 16 local government areas of the state, adding that it is carrying out mass extension works with stakeholders such as people in the academic and extension officers.
“In the project implementation manual, the entire country is targeting 1.4 million farmers. So, for Ekiti, we are looking at over 200,000 farmers to become commercial farmers.
“If we are able to empower 200,000 farmers, look at the indirect jobs that will be linked to that. For the indirect jobs, we are looking at over 1.5 million jobs,” Mr Adedipe said.
Ogunloba James, who spoke for the project lead consultant, Synergy Impact Consultant Limited, noted that attention has always been on crop production and that this is the first time the country is shifting attention to livestock production.
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