The Federal Government through the Minister of Agriculture And Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, has been charged to provide more incentives for young farmers, as well as provide an enabling environment for them to thrive in their agribusiness venture.
The Chief Operating Officer, Ultiads Resource, Omoyele Omonira made the appeal on Thursday in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, during the official launch of a platform, “Farmlinkup” at the Elebu office of the organisation.
Omoyele, an agro-economist from the Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, advised the newly sworn-in Minister of Agriculture and Food Security to carry the youths along in his programmes.
He said: “The minister of agriculture and food security should not leave the agric sector to the elderly ones alone, he should try to provide more incentives for the younger farmers too.”
“We should not leave the farm to our fathers that are their late 60s and 70s, we should find a way to empower the younger ones that are into farming, the minister of agric and food security should create incentives for the younger ones because agriculture is the food basket of the nation and if we manage it well it will produce food for the world, nobody can survive without eating.”
“Government should assist our youths in agriculture with soft loans, and create an enabling environment for them to thrive in that sector. Let them know that labour pays, not quick illegal means of making money. With this farmlinkup platform more marketers can come on board, more logistic companies can come on board.”
“And it is an avenue of creating employment for the youths. If the government supports this project, more opportunities can still come up for our youths and it will be a great opportunity for our country at large,” Omoyele said.
Omoyele explained that the farmlinkup platform was created as a hub or marketplace for farmers where they can link up or project their farm produce or services to the world.
“We are calling on all farmers in the world to project their products on the platform so that people can have access to fresh, nutritious, easy compared prices of farm produce.”
“We now feel this idea is not something we can keep to ourselves, we created a website for it , make sure it is secured, and we give our customers, probably the farmers and consumers that really need products on our platform a kind of leverage whereby they can be secured meeting farmers there.”
“And as much as we cannot secure every transaction, there is a caution word on the website that don’t go to meet people in their houses or do your transactions in a hidden place, make sure the person you want to transact with has an office where you can relate with.”
“Our own objective is just to link farmers and consumers together. I call it the African online place for farmers in Nigeria.”
“We are not the sole distributors on farm linkup, like I said earlier, it’s a combination of bringing the farmers and consumers together, for us to now meet a series of farmers all over the nation.”
“We need to place adverts on reputable platforms that can showcase us to the world and even allow these farmers to see what is happening in the farm industry so that they can place their goods and services on the platform so that consumers can have access to them.”
“We are revolutionising the agricultural system whereby you can take a picture of your farm produce, upload , put your phone number and address and anybody in need of this product will always call you and get a delivery system probably a logistic platform to ship your items to the consumers.it makes the job of the off-takers so easy this time around.”
“Where we are going to in this country, everything is being digitized and we are trying to input the agricultural sector into the digital system right now, so it will reduce the rate at which people are being kidnapped in their farm places, accidents on the road, and the risk of logistic expenses shipping from one place to another.”
He called on those providing logistic services to also come on board the market space and take advantage of the platform which he said would help break the chain of those monopolising the market space and gives young people access to market farm produce on a single platform
“Whether the farmers like it or not, they are coming online, they are coming into the internet, and if they refuse, their children will do that for them.”
He said discussions are ongoing to go into partnership with farmers associations both in Ibadan and Lagos state.
On measures put in place to ensure quality control, he said customers complain section had been created on the website to get feedback from clients on any product warning that any complain on any product will be deactivated from the website, adding that it will also create awareness about the kind of product quality that should be placed on the website.