The Vice-Chancellor, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Prof. Olusola Oyewole, has said that the relegation of agriculture to the background after the oil boom was responsible for unemployment and food scarcity in the country.
He said for the nation to get out of the unemployment and hunger woods, all the tiers of government in the country should take agriculture seriously.
Oyewole lamented that agriculture, which used to be the mainstay of the country’s economy, had been relegated and abandoned particularly by the youths.
He said, “Despite all that is happening today, agriculture is still the future of our country. We will need to re-orientate our people to have an attitudinal change as a people and as a nation.
“There is also the need for us to challenge our youths on the need to be committed to agriculture.”
But he argued that the agriculture-based institution had contributed to the food development in the country.
The university, he said, had been able to impact positively on its host community and the nation at large, through its research activities. He added that efforts were being intensified towards attaining food security in the country.
The VC said that apart from being a university committed to knowledge generation through its tripodal mandate of teaching, research and extension services, it also runs unique programmes aimed at developing the country.
These programmes, he said, include the Community-Based Farming Scheme, the Agricultural Media Resource and Extension Centre and the Graduate Farming Employment Scheme.
Oyewole said that through COBFAS, the institution’s students are sent to four different locations in Ogun State, where the university had secured lands for them to put into practice what they had been taught in the classroom.
“Under the scheme they (students) go to these communities for a period of six to 10 months to impact the local farmers with modern technique of agriculture, which they have been taught in class,” he said.