By Idris Khalid
A executive director with the Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI), Ilorin, Kwara state, Dr. Olufemi Oladunni has stressed the need for Nigerian farmers to build their capacities towards making the nation sufficiency in food production.
He told participants of Development Capacity in Value Chains for Livestock Farmers held in Bauchi that the Federal Government has directed the Institute to offer training to farmers nationwide towards meeting food security for the country.
Olufemi who was represented by Awoyemi Samson, Coordinator of Training Technology Department, said, “We come to Bauchi as a target state to ensure its farmers are not left out of the institute’s training programme. Our target is for the value chain farmers, people producing livestock, processing, marketing and even exporting to conserve foreign exchange”.
“Ours is to make the food sufficient, we want to see farmers produce enough to meet the country’s need, and if possible export the commodity for foreign exchange earning”, Awoyeni told training participants from the six states of the Northeast sub-region.
A director with the Bauchi State Agricultural Development Program (BASDP), Malam Ya’u Mohammed has earlier in a welcome address thanked the Institute for bringing the training down to Bauchi, as he commended the BASDP for facilitating the smooth conduct of the training.
He advised the participants to pay greater attention to the training and step-down what they have learnt to farmers in their various localities in the march to enhance food production generally.
BASDP Program Manager, Abubakar Ja’afar Ilelah said the training workshop which was organized by ARMTI in collaboration with his agency is being conducted in Hausa to keep participant efficiently abreast of all technicalities of the training.
