Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) in Kwara State during the week trained over 120 local soya beans farmers on capacity building to enhance the crop’s value chain quality production for export.
Speaking during the training programme, the state NEPC Trade Promotion Advisor, Mr. Ajayi James Akinwunmi, said that the training programme aimed to provide institutional support for farmers in the Soya beans sub-sector for increase production, improved yields and economic benefits.
Akinwumi said that Soyabean, a category ‘A’ Product in the “Zero Oil Plan”, trades over a whopping $100 billion and Nigeria’s target share of the market is 5 per cent amounting to $5billion.
The NEPC Trade Promotion Advisor also said that high volatilities in oil price has impacted negatively on the nation’s economy, adding that the option left is to focus on non-oil sector and give it optimal attention.
“The overall objective of this programme is to further strengthen the capacity of our farmers in the production and post-harvest handling for improved yields and economic benefits. It is believed that at the end of the programme, not only will the constraints preventing an increase in the production and supply of Soya beans to international market will have been adequately addressed but also business expansion and production system transformation will be attained,” he said.
The NEPC official, who lamented that despite the soil friendly nature of Kwara State, soya beans aggregate performance is below expectation from the survey carried out by the Council, adding that the development had made the crop less competitive in the international market.
“There are still visible standard challenges in most of our export process despite the massive efforts towards promotion of the non-oil exports, as some of our products from Nigeria, like sesame beans, were rejected few years back.
“This was as a result of indifferences to the standard rules in the handling of our export process. Thus, there is the need to embrace international best practices as quality standard goes a long way to determine success in export business,” he added.
Also speaking, the NEPC executive director and the CEO, Dr.
Ezra Yakusak, represented by Head, Agric Commodities of the NEPC, Mr. Rufus Durodoye, said that the training would afford the soya beans farmers to build their capacity to meet future demands of soya beans all over the world.
He also said that the farmers would be presented with agricultural inputs such as quality seedings, sprayers, tarpoline to dry their crops, among other items to improve their productivity for export potentials.
“These are core farmers and not portfolio farmers. We see them as first line of defence when it comes to soya beans production. Without farmers there’s no nation. We have women farmers here, young graduates and some with higher degrees. The turn out is impressive
The participants are over 120, including farmers’ associations like soya beans growers association.”
and then