October 17, 2014 – Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola has empowered 3,149 small scale farmers, youths, women and the vulnerable through its Agricultural Value Chain Empowerment programme. They were empowered during an occasion to mark World Food Day in Lagos.
The beneficiaries include 73 egg producers, 754 people who got 50 crates of eggs for marketing, 250 poultry farmers who got 40 bags layers mash, 30 people provided with 1,000 kg of maize, 60 kg cat fish for 296 fish marketers, 152 others who got outboard engines and 152 who received bundle nets, 295 people went home with 10 bags of pig feed each, 40 who had 10 bags of sheep and goat feed, 305 who received Personal Protective Equipment and 48 butchers who got meat processing accessories.
Speaking at the event, Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola said that farmers and parents should never disconnect their children from their businesses or vocations adding that children of farmers still help their parents at the farms and that in the Nigerian context, no Nigerian father or mother should be ashamed to bring up their children as farmers.
He noted that the irony of human civilization is that every day, somewhere at sometime, somebody is going hungry and begging for food just as someone is looking for shelter to lay his head.
According to him, many fail to realize that all the best fabrics that people wear come from the earth which is cotton and that all of the cornflakes and different kinds of flakes that people are eating is a byproduct of corn adding that the time has come to connect all of such processes together.
He called on beneficiaries of agricultural produce and processing machines to use the items well and pay tax when they start making profit adding that the State Government was able to provide the items from the tax paid by the residents.
