Kogi Sets to Hold Agricultural Summit
The Kogi State Government, through the Agricultural Development Project (ADP) has concluded arrangements to convene its maiden Agricultural Summit from Monday November 20th to Tuesday November 21st, 2017.
The summit which has as its theme, “Agriculture: Investment Opportunities” would be declared open by His Excellency, the Governor of Kogi state, Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello who will thereafter launch the Fair Agric Project (FAP) in the state.
FAP will be the vehicle to implement the Agriculturist vision of the Kogi State Governor under the New Direction administration of Yahaya Bello. It is designed to create agricultural villages or farm settlements where farmers and all those in the value chain would specialize in the production, processing and sale of one crop which would help carve a niche for themselves.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh would make a lead presentation on the topic, “It is Agriculture’s Time to Shine”, while there will be several expert presentations from ADP officials, Civil Society Organizations, University Dons as well as representatives of credit or financial institutions.
According to the Managing Director of the ADP, Oyisi Paul Okatahi, “the summit is an opportunity to bring together all stakeholders namely Investors, Farmers, Sponsors, Academics and General Public to deliberate and create opportunities within the State”.
The deliverables of the summit is to create jobs within the state especially for youths and women. Income generation and trade balance. Bring in local and foreign investment opportunities, open up cluster farming centres across the state and ultimately to create wealth for the teaming population of the state.
The summit will help farmers in the state consolidate on cassava production, rice, cashew and also to be number one for other crops such as soyabean and maize.
Kogi is already the number one cassava producer in Nigeria and by extension number one in the world (Nigeria: 54 million metric tonnes (MT) per annum. It is estimated that Kogi produce slightly over 4 million metric tonnes.
The summit is expected to bring about expedited turnaround on Agricultural development while there will be the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Investors during and after the summit.
The event would also see to the granting of investor’s conditional Certificate of Ownership (C of O) to develop Fair Agricultural Project (FAP) Villages. This will be tied to performance milestones.
Other expected outcomes of the summit are; design and supply of Agricultural value chain; improved collaboration between agricultural and other relevant organizations with Kogi State government using ADP as the focal point; registration of farmers on the on-line farmer’s directory to enhance seamless communication with farmers; and, building online commodity exchange for farmers and traders of agricultural commodities.
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