Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun has called for a ban on the export of primary farm produce as part of strategies to grow local productions and enhance the value chains of the country’s agricultural investments.
He said only innovative ventures in agriculture could make farm produce to be converted into secondary products, adding that Nigeria must create strategies that would make agriculture to be attractive to a new generation of young Nigerians before farming could be viable option towards economic diversification.
The Osun Governor spoke Friday evening at the Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, at the annual conference of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.
The theme of the 2016 conference of the Editors, which also had in attendance Governor of Rivers, Nyesom Wike; former Governor of Ogun, Olusegun Osoba; and representatives of governors of Lagos, Niger, Bayelsa, Bauchi and Plateau, is Economic Diversification: Agriculture as option for a prosperous Nigeria.
Charging Nigerian agricultural scientists, technologists, nutritionists and other allied experts to be innovative, Aregbesola lamented that for ages, Nigerians have failed to improve the varieties of foods that are obtainable for their various farm produce.
He said Nigeria’s agriculture must be directed towards producing what the country needs and not what it can only export.
He reminded the country of the only way through which agriculture could be profitable adding that it was only when Nigerian farmers become big suppliers and feeders of the manufacturing industries that their ventures could make them wealthy.
He said the school feeding programme of his administration was not just about education but about an aggressive promotion of agriculture.
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