From Clement Adeyi, Osogbo
TOWARDS ensuring a sustainable agricultural revolution as a panacea to current economic hardship occasioned by the sharp drop in crude oil price, Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, has flagged off the 2016 Cashew planting season.
The governor spoke at the flag-off ceremony at Ogudu Village, Ile-Ife, in Ife-East Local Government Area of the state yesterday.
Aregbesola called on all able-bodied Nigerians to take to farming, on full or part time basis, “as an alternative to crude oil which can no longer sustain the country’s economy.”
He described cashew as a cash and health-promoting crop, noting that Osun State was ready to partner any investor to boost the agricultural sector.
He also called on other leaders in all tiers of government to stop relying on the failed oil sector and seek other means of sustaining the economy.
This was even as the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, disclosed that the ministry would embark on planting two million cashew trees every year for four years.
Ogbeh further remarked that the purpose of quick intervention in agriculture by the Federal Government was to ensure the nation regained her lost glory as the food basket of Africa, saying all hands must be on deck to revitalise the sector and the economy.
The minister maintained that since agriculture was the largest employer of labour, his ministry would deploy necessary mechanisms that would facilitate mass employment for the Nigerian youths.
In his remarks, Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi disclosed that 2,000 hectares of land had been acquired in Ile-Ife and being cultivated for cashew plantation, adding that as soon as people started showing interest in farming, more land would be released for the purpose.
The monarch stressed that the ongoing massive planting of cashew in the state was, no doubt, the beginning of a new dawn in the agricultural revolution in the country, adding that with such a giant stride being recorded, the state had set up a machinery to rescue the nation from economic strangulation in the nearest future.