The National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) has said it will be sending 200 young farmers training on crop production and animal husbandry in Israel and Morocco.
It said the aim was to make agriculture more attractive to youths as the training would expose and equip them on modern agriculture and agribusiness, which will lead to massive food production and exportation.
Speaking during the handing over of travel documents to the beneficiaries in Abuja, the Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer, NALDA, Prince Paul Ikonne, said it was a continuation of the National Young Farmers Scheme (NYFS) programme kicked off by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Ikonne said the training was a directive from Buhari to ensure that youths were involved in food production.
He explained that the programme was part of the ‘Aggressive Food Production’ in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
He also said the youth who were drawn from the 36 states would be trained for six days on greenhouse farming and animal husbandry, and that the two countries were chosen because of their expertise in these areas.
Explaining how the youth were selected, he said: “We sent out messages to stakeholders, who selected them, and we are making sure that the 36 states in the federation would participate in this training; so when they come back, they would be able to train the people within their state and their locality.”
According to him, the expenses were paid by the Federal Government as contained in NALDA’s budget, and the beneficiaries would go their localities to train other young people on NALDA’s integrated farm estates in their areas.
“When we return, they will begin to teach others this is what we saw there, this is how to do it and we will get better yield. So, NALDA’s own will be much different and beneficial to the country because we have where they will be integrated when they come back from the training. So that is what makes NALDA’s programme more sustainable and unique,” he said.
A beneficiary from Abia State, Julius Ugochukwu Nwokoma, said: “I am very happy to be part of this programme. Agriculture has been one of my activities and I’m running a small scale farm business in my village.
“This opportunity will help me to apply more knowledge about farm and to improve my own farm business, and it will help me to encourage and engage my fellow youths to try them and tell them what farm is all about, so that they can go back to farm.”