No fewer than 3,000 women, youths and peasant farmers got modern equipment and inputs from the Lagos State Government under the Y2021 Agricultural Value Chains Enterprise Activation Programme to scale up their agricultural practices.
The support was majorly for agripreneurs in poultry, piggery and artisanal fishery, which are the three sub-sectors largely affected by the disruption occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Sanwo-Olu, at the flag-off of the distribution of productive assets and inputs to the beneficiaries of the programme, explained that the intervention was necessitated by the need to raise food production, processing and marketing, while also creating jobs and sustaining the livelihood of the farmers through value creation.
In the scheme, 300 youths trained in Aquaculture and Poultry Production at the Lagos Agripreneurship Programme (LAP) were empowered with agricultural inputs valued at N245 million, which represented 46.7 per cent of the total investment in the programme.
Other beneficiaries include 400 pig farmers who participated in Agricultural Youth Empowerment Scheme (Agric-YES); 680 fishermen, 190 fish cage culture artisans, 360 egg marketers, 500 fish processors, 200 rice farmers and 370 crop farmers.