THE Nigerian Institute of Soil Science (NISS), recently put together a workshop for extension workers and farmers in the South-West part of Nigeria on the protection and management of soil resources.
Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune, shortly after the opening ceremony of the workshop held on the premises of the regional office of the Oyo State Agricultural Development Agency (OYSADA), Moor Plantation, Ibadan, President and Chairman, Governing Council, NISS, Professor Ayoade Ogunkunle, noted that the training became very important so that the participants would know how to handle soils in order to get high yield of various crops and to also manage the soil in such a way that the yield will not go down.
He said:”This training is being put together as part of our mandate to regulate the management and the use of soils. We want this to reach out to every part of Nigeria and this is part of it. This is actually the first batch of the training which consists of three states, the second batch would hold in a shortwhile. So that by the time this continues, we believe that the sustainable food security we are clamouring for would be a reality.”
Ogunkunle, while commenting on the quality of soils in Nigeria stated that:”The soil we have in Nigeria are low activity clay soils because there is something in our soils that degenerate fast because of the kind of clay minerals that they have. They do not have the quality of holding the nutrients for long and that is why we need organic matter content to be very high.
“Whereas, some of our farmers in their practice burn the organic matter. You know when they clear the soil to make the place clean, they resort to burning which is wrong because they are burning the real rich part of the soil so what we are teaching them is how to manage the soil that instead of shifting cultivation that our old farmers used to do, the population has become so much that you do not have the land to give to them for shifting cultivation, the population increase in Nigeria is so high that we cannot practice shifting cultivation again.”
In his welcome address, the South-West Zonal Coordinator of NISS, Professor James Adediran, noted that:”A 5-year action plan for the management and protection of soil resources in Nigeria has been drawn and is in operation. Several Memoranda of Agreement for cooperation in soil technology dissemination have been signed with a number of corporate national and international organisations.”
Adeniran, who is the immediate past Director of the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IAR&T), also said that:”NISS is not doing it alone, the institute is working in collaboration with Zonal Coordinating Research Institutes and States ADPs to disseminate agricultural technologies to our farmers.”
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