By Precious Oham
No fewer than 30 youths in Ekiti State have benefited from the first phase of the Youths in Organic Agriculture, YIOA, Project organised by the Justice, Development and Peace Initiative, JDPI, of the Catholic Diocese of Ekiti.
Speaking with Journalists in Ado-Ekiti, on Friday, Project Manager of YIOA, Ernest Adenike said the project is targeted at enlightening youths in the state to embrace agricultural opportunities.
He noted that JDPI is committed to put an end to the rising food insecurity in the country and unemployment by empowering and mentoring the youths to own their farms.
While calling on government to channel the resources meant for the agricultural sector into proper use, he added that organic agriculture is profitable and beneficial to save lives.
His words: “This project targets the youths and it is a project of JDPI Ekiti Diocese. It is set to enlighten the youths in our society to embrace agricultural opportunities.
“According to statistics, majority of the youths are jobless and most of them struggle to see where they can fit in. Agriculture is a broad area where everybody can pitch their tenth.
“It is set to gather youths in Ekiti to train them in agricultural practices then give them little empowerment and mentorship to make sure they thrive in their own farm after the training processes.
“We went to the grassroots to select these youths that really need this opportunity. We want to make sure that the beneficiaries are people who actually need this thing.
“We want to see how we can end hunger. There is a lot of problem about food in the country. We want to see how we can bring more people as food warriors to fight the food insecurity problem in the country.
“We are looking at organic agriculture to save lives. When you say food is life, you shouldn’t give them chemicals to take but the food you are producing should save lives and not take lives.
“Let the funds meant for agricultural sector get to the grassroots and looking at the result there is no more food because these monies are getting into the wrong hands.”
On their part, the beneficiaries expressed satisfaction with the giant strides of JDPI aimed at ensuring that more youths embrace agriculture and are gainfully employed.
Agbaje Olajumoke said: “I’m very happy because it gives me joy having been taught the theory aspect in school but this project affords me the opportunity to practicalise what I was taught in school. It will give me the opportunity to own my busines and be able to feed the nation.”
According to Tomide Falade, “The youths out there can venture into agriculture and it’s very good business that everyone can venture into. We that are trained today can train others tomorrow.
“It’s a thing of joy for me because I’m an agriculturist because I’m very limited to knowledge when I came across this project. I appreciate them for what they are doing for the youths because some of us have been practicing agriculture but not in this way.”
