Lagos maize farmers receive tutelage on climate-smart agriculture

SELECTED maize farmers in Lagos state have been trained on climate-smart agriculture in order to get requisite knowledge to thrive in the era of climate change.

Olayinka Akeredolu, Lagos State Coordinator Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, while speaking at the National Agriculture Development productivity for the year 2023, held at the Lagos State Agricultural Development Authority, Oko-Oba said that the training was organised to assist maize farmers in the state to ameliorate the effect of climate change on their production.

She said in 2022, there was a lot of flood all over Nigeria which affected the production of many crops and even affected animal production too.

“Today we are talking about maize; how our farmers can produce maize in spite of climate change. How can they still make profit in spite of climate change and what they can do to ensure that they don’t have losses on their production?”

She said 80 farmers were selected from the three senatorial districts of the state for the training which will in turn go back and train others in their clusters or community.

“We want them to spread the message, of this is what you can do in event of a problems caused by climate change and the major one we have been facing is flooding.”

On the selection process, she said that participants were selected by the agric development project which has extension agents in all the nooks and crannies of the state with the collaboration of the Maize Farmers Association of Nigeria Lagos State chapter.

The facilitator of the training, Dr. Sadiku Bukola, noted that the impact of climate change of food production is enormous and that maize is one of the key crop in Lagos state which the production was significant affected by the impact of climate change.

“We all know the impact of climate change on agriculture generally especially production. We use it for so many things; human feed, livestock feed, even for as raw materials for array of industrial products, but lately the production is significant affected by the impact of climate change.

At the training she demonstrated to the farmers how they can go about their cropping, how they can cope with climate change so that it would not have negative effect on their productivity.

Sadiku added that at the end of the training measures will be put in place to ensure that the farmers are adequately monitored towards embracing climate smart agriculture so that at the end of the day, the state will be food secured.

Programme Manager, LSADA, Kosoko Tawakaltu, while speaking, said that the programme was organised to train extension officers and maize farmers in the state for the present situation in climate change.

Kosoko, who was represented at the programme by Ebhota Olubukola, Director Extension Services LSADA said that what the state is aiming at is bountiful harvest, they the farmers should plants and get results.

“This issue of climate has been an issue for the past few years that the farmers are unable to meet up what is supposed to be the output of what they are planting, that is the essence of this training.

“We have our farmers and our extension agents who will be trained on current situation in climate so that as they are going to start farming activity of this season, they will be able to plan accordingly and get results. Why we are doing this for our farmers is that we want them to get more yield of whatever they are planting, we don’t want a situation whereby climate change will affect their production, their income and at the same time to affect their living standard.

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