Agriculture
THE Premier Agribusiness Academy (PAA) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to drive food security, build private sector/farmers capacity for sustainable economic growth.
Mr Francis Toromade, the Director-General of Premier Agribusiness Academy, made this known in a statement on Wednesday in Lagos.
PAA is a centre for learning and transferring innovative competence on sustainable investments across all sectors of the economy.
According to Toromade, some stakeholders within the agricultural industry are not aware of what IITA is doing in terms of research and how it can impact their farming practice.
“What PAA will do as part of this partnership is to make sure that all the commodities and crops that are the focus of research in IITA like cassava, maize, soybean, yam, among others, get private sector awareness and patronage.
“The purpose of the agreement is to increase human capacity development through good and most impactful agricultural practice in the areas of maize, cowpea, soybean, yam and cassava cultivation.
“With the same farm land size, South Africa generates 1.97 tons of soybean per hectare, while Nigeria generates 0.97 tons per hectare with the same size and quality of land.
“The difference is the level of knowledge and best practices put in place to increase in yield and farmer profitability,” he said.
Toromade explained that with the collaboration agreement, PAA would bridge the gap between the farmer, the private sector and the quality research done in IITA.
He said, if the gap was bridged and farmers, as well as other stakeholders put into practice the cutting-edge research findings of IITA, yields would increase and farming would become more profitable and attractive in Nigeria.
Also, Dr Kenton Dashiell, the Deputy Director-General, Partnership for Delivery in IITA, said that with the MoU, IITA and PAA had agreed to exchange information in areas of human capacity development on the Most Impactful Practices (MIP) on IITA’s core mandate crops.
Dashiell said that the agreement would impact private sector stakeholders in the agricultural value chain and farmers in Nigeria.
The deputy director-general said that this brought about higher produce, farmer profitability and ultimately food security in Nigeria.
In his comments, Mr AyoOluwa Okediji, an Information Technology (IT) Consultant with PAA, said that the collaboration was aimed at driving productivity and profitability in agribusiness.
Okediji said the partnership tends to benefit all parties as digital technologies and other innovative solutions would be leveraged.
He said that this would aid proper dissemination and transfer of IITA’s research results into effective policy and practice across the agri-food value chain.
According to him, the MoU will build on the technical strengths of both parties for the development of agribusiness and farmer profitability in Nigeria.
He said, while IITA was known for quality research in agriculture, PAA was renowned for its private sector agribusiness capacity building projects.
Okediji said that while IITA carries out quality research with ground breaking agricultural discoveries, its research output needs to be properly disseminated to the private sector, stakeholders and local farmers for practice.
“Notwithstanding commendable efforts by the IITA Business Incubation platform was designed to ensure that results from research are transferred into practice by end users.
“With this IITA/PAA collaboration, more stakeholders within the agribusiness value chain can be reached and empowered through access to research results that are domiciled with IITA that can improve farmers’ livelihood.
“In other words, the MoU will help PAA support what IITA is presently doing in terms of capacity building and extension to extend research results.
“This is one of the core values that PAA is bringing into the partnership,” he said.
Commenting, Mr Frederick Schreurs, Chief Executive Officer, IITA Business Incubation Platform, explained that the platform’s founding objectives was to stimulate product development.
Schreurs said that it would also provide expertise and training in commercial agriculture and farm management among others.
NAN
– May 19, 2021 @ 18:19 GMT
Tags: food security IITA Premier Agribusiness Academy partner to build capacity
