Students of the Department of Agriculture, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, recently gathered at the institution’s bus stop with their produce in exchange for cash.
They are the fourth year students undergoing their industrial training programme.
Produce brought to the venue for sale were mainly vegetables such as Jute leaves (Ewedu),Celosia Argentia (Soko, Lagos Spinach) and Amaranthus green (Efo tete), which were sold at a give-away price of N100, per bundle.
According to the students, apart from the manpower effort of three months till maturity, the seeds and manure were provided by the university while proceeds from the sale of produce would go back to the institution.
They said they had planted the natural seeds, not the genetically-modified version. The students also informed that they preferred to sell their produce openly and directly to avoid middlemen. This is because middlemen do not buy at an encouraging rate.
In their opinion, application of fertilizers to the plant is merely to enhance its output, because they had earlier done manuring, soil turning and bed making before planting, which would further enhance production while cow dung was the major manure used to grow their crops.
With this experience, the students said they would like to apply the knowledge gained to go into farming as a profession; as a few of them said they wish to go into agriculture after graduation, which they never thought of before now.
They said farming would equally allow them to earn extra income.
FarmingFarmersFarms gathered that students like Folasade Ajifowobaje and Temiloluwa Akeredolu are enthusiastic to go into farming after graduation, especially where there is access to financial and technological support. Adefolarin Ogunwusi and Olaotan Mubarak also said they hope to go into farming under several conditions.
Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, identified the existing opportunities in the agriculture sector to include value addition and human capital development.
He noted that Nigeria needs farming logistics, storage and post-harvesting infrastructure, among others.
The disclosed that the major reasons why many agriculture graduates may continue to run away from farming are caused by little access to farm machines, lack of access to finance, unavailability of technology and other modern implements.
He suggested that if Nigeria could invest heavily in agriculture like what is obtainable in countries such as The Netherlands, Germany, and others, more students would be motivated to see agriculture as a full-time job instead of rushing to acquire university certificates and jettisoning farming.
