Employ agric to tackle unemployment, food problems, entrepreneur urges govt

The Federal Government has been urged to employ agriculture to tackle the problems of insecurity, unemployment, energy and food crises in the country, as well as generate huge foreign exchange through export of agro-allied products.
This advice was given yesterday by an agric expert/innovative technologist, Prince Adekola Okedele, promoter of an Italian firm FENCO Food Engineering Company in Nigeria and Managing Director of Prince Ades Oke International Ventures Limited, while receiving a top Italian technologist and Consultant, Dr. Paolo Scisciolo in Lagos.
Okedele said “It is on record that Nigeria was once a revenue earner from agricultural and agro-allied products: groundnut from the North, palm produce and rubber from the East and South South while the South West contributed foreign exchange to the national till.
Giving an example, Okedele said if the Federal government adopts the FENCO Food Engineering’s small, medium and large-scale food processing technology it could provide millions of job opportunities to jobless Nigerians.
Okedele a former Customs officer-turned agric expert, said FENCO Food Engineering Company had installed 330 food processing lines all over the world that could process Nigeria’s major farm produce such as tomatoes, pawpaw, millet, guava, pinapples, Mangoes passion fruits and citrus for food consumption, exports and preservation as well as help local farmers to boost their harvests.
He advised the government to experiment the project by establishing at least, two plants in each of the six geopolitical zones of the country, as suggested to officials of SMEDAN in Abuja during his technology demonstration at the instance of SMEDAN director-general on March 13, 2012, result of which we are expecting till date.
Okedele said that by now President Goodluck Jonathan should have commissioned at least 12 processing plants in the country, which could have generated millions of jobs to farmers and graduates if SMEDAN had taken our suggestions and recommendations very serious.
For instance in Nigeria, a tomato processing plant with a capacity of 600 tonnes per 24 hours would need about 330 hectares of land for plantation, with 1,000 direct workers in the farm daily apart from hundreds of factory workers to sustain the plant.
Prince Okedele said that setting up two food processing plants in each of the six zones would need 3,960 hectres of land and generate at least 1.2 million jobs opportunities for Nigerians.
On energy, Okedele said, FENCO had supported its programme with another Italian company, Cipriani, to produce one megawatt of energy in container to power each plant.  This new Italian technology on power-renewal energy programme is worth supporting by the government and private sector if the country is to solve the acute electricity problems in the country, he said.

By: Adeniyi Adunola