15 persons involved in the agricultural value chain in Lagos have been honoured by the State Government for their contributions to food security and sustainability in the State.
Dr Yakub Bashorun, a former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of agriculture emerged the best farmer of the year 2020, while Mrs Sola Ogunleye won best woman in agriculture, Mr Segun Zebulu was named best Artisanal fisherman and Mr Olamipo Olubanjo, best vegetable farmer.
Others are; Mrs Mosunmola Olulade, best poultry farmer, Mr Segun Atho, best rice farmer, Mr Anu Adekoya, best piggery farmer and KisFund coconut won best coconut processor, Mr Odelade Olufemi, best perishable marketer agric while Samuel Omitunde emerged as the most promising farmer of the year.
Presenting the award to the beneficiaries during the end of the year edition of the Eko City Farmers’ Fair and Farmers’ Appreciation Day held at Alausa Ikeja, the Commissioner for Agriculture, Ms Abisola Olusanya specially commended the farmers for their hard work and vigour in ensuring that the food supply chain was not broken particularly during the Covid-19 lockdown.
According to her, the year 2020 has been a special and peculiar one with the corona virus pandemic ravaging the world at large and Lagos State being the epicentre of the COVID-19 activity in Nigeria making the agricultural sector the second most impacted sector after health by the pandemic.
“We need to understand the importance of our farmers in the scheme of things; without farmers, the Nigeria of today cannot survive. We know what happened during the lockdown when people thought they were not going to get access to food but yet our farmers came through for us.Many thanks to you our dear farmers, you stood by us by ensuring that the food supply chain was not broken at any time. It was stretched yes, but with your efforts and God’s grace it was not broken” she said
Ms Olusanya explained that the Farmers’ Appreciation and Award day was in recognition of the importance of the contributions of stakeholders and in furtherance of the Sanwo-Olu administration’s plan to give priority attention to the sector.
She said “We realized that this year has been a very, very tough year, especially for farmers considering all they’ve been through. If I start with the piggery farmers, for instance, with the swine flu that happened, a lot of them lost their means of livelihood almost to a point of no return. Our poultry farmers are still under a lot of strain right now as they are not able to get poultry feed. Fish farmers are also going on through a lot of stress with the cost of fish feed. And then you have our rice farmers as well. We are trying to support and we’ll continue to support you, generally speaking, our farmers have been under a lot this year, not just locally, obviously nationally as well and we felt that with the COVID- 19 pandemic and the stress on the food systems, there is no better way to show appreciation to our farmers”
She maintained that farmers play a very important role in the economy of the country and deserved to be recognised as very key stakeholders.
“It is also a form of incentive for farmers to understand their importance in the scheme of things and for people to also begin to give them the recognition, iIt’s one thing to recognize a doctor and give a doctor the respect the doctor deserves because you think the doctor can heal you. But you need to understand that a farmer is even more important than a doctor, if you eat properly, you will never have to go to the hospital. If you eat properly, you will never have to take drugs, the food you eat, that is the work of the farmer which is actually much more than the drugs you think you need. A medical doctor is someone you need once in a while when you think maybe you need to do medical checkup for food you must consume every day. Even if you are on a fast you must eat once a day minimum” she argued.
Ibukunoluwa Temitope
