Rose Ejembi, Makurdi

Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) Mr Olusegun Awolowo has said that, despite domestic production of soy beans, Nigeria has an insignificant trade volume in global trade of the product.

Awolowo made the remark at a one day capacity building workshop on “Developing Soya Bean Value-Chain for Export” held at the Precious Events Center in Makurdi, the Benue State capital on Monday.

He said that in spite of being the largest consumer of soy beans in sub-Sahara Africa, Nigeria contributed only about 730,000 tout of the 341.4 million tons of global soy beans production in 2018.

The NEPC boss posited that for Nigeria to leverage on her natural advantages in soy beans production, and to play key and critical roles in the global market, there must be Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and massive investment in the sub-sector to stimulate production to satisfy the growing demand for soy beans products locally and internationally.

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“Good Agricultural Practice is the whole gamut of activities in the product value-chain, which include general farm operations (inputs, worker health and hygiene etc), Field harvesting, processing and field packing activities, storage and transportation, Traceability etc,” Awolowo said.

While urging participants to take advantage of the capacity building workshop, he expressed the assurance that the Council will continue to work with critical stakeholders and traditional partners through a variety of initiatives to ensure that the shared quest for economic diversification is achieved.

Earlier in a welcome address, NEPC Trade Advisor/Head (Makurdi Export Assistance Office) Mr Anani Egon noted that the workshop was designed with the primary objective of improving farmers’ adherence to Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) with a view to addressing post harvest losses, market access, yield and quality improvement of soya beans.

He observed that Benue State is the largest producing cluster of soy beans in the country and produces over 65 percent of the Nigeria’s output.

“Soya beans plays a significant role in the socio-economic lives of the people. It is one of the products that holds the greatest potentials for export growth in the state,  especially if value addition is adopted by the processors and farmers adopt good practices,” he noted.