Joseph Affoh, is the founder of Firm Vine Solutions, a multi-service company with special focus on agriculture. He is also the South South Zonal Coordinator, Tomato Agricultural Farmers Development Association of Nigeria (TAFDAN). He tells NURUDEEN ALIMI, in this interview how the company is contributing towards the development of agriculture in the country and why it became imperative for Nigeria to see agriculture as main source of revenue.
CAN you share with us what Firm Vine Solutions Limited is all about?
Firm Vine Solutions Limited is a multi-service company. The company is into farming, processing and packaging of agro-produce, human capacity development and consulting.
How well can you say your company has contributed to the development of agriculture in Nigeria?
The company has has been contributing towards the sustainability of agricultural development through her various training programmes. We know that the more players we have in the agricultural sector the faster the development.
As a company, with keen interest in human capacity development as part of our mission, we have several training packages that gives people the the opportunity to get equipped with various different skills in the agro-allied industry. We offer both free and paid trainings. We have paid training packages that is as low as N1,000.
This is to ensure that more Nigerians have access to information that will enable them build sustainable agribusiness.
We just concluded two batches of free training for private school teachers across Nigeria on food processing and packaging. We had over one thousand of them in attendance. It was an online course. We decided to do that for private school teachers because their income were affected as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is to enable them have another source of income even by the time they go back to work again.
Do you have any form of partnership with government in a bid to develop agriculture?
We currently do not have any kind of partnership with the government for the development of agriculture in Nigeria. However, we are looking forward to such partnerships with government at different levels and it would be our pleasure to work with the government in this regard.
Can you say Nigeria is actually working along the line of achieving food security?
Going by the different agricultural intervention programmes being put in place by the government, we can say that Nigeria is working towards achieving food security. Though a lot still have to be done especially in the area of implementation. There are so many laudable agricultural programmes that are yet to be fully implemented.
Would you say Nigeria is practicing agriculture the way it should particularly as it is being practiced in other African countries and some other developed countries of the world?
Nigeria is not practicing agriculture the way other African and some developed countries are doing because we have other resources to sustain the nation’s economy. Agriculture was once the economic backbone of Nigeria. But it is no longer so. Attention has been diverted to oil. Nigeria can still go back to agriculture fully while making other natural resources an additional source of income. COVID-19 has further proven to us that we cannot rely on crude oil but agriculture is here to stay because it has always stood the test of time.
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