As part of efforts to boost all-round-year vegetables production the National Agricultural Land Development Authority(NALDA) has started the construction of greenhouses to enhance vegetables production in the country.
Conducting agriculture journalists round the site of the 20 units of greenhouse project at Yakubu Gowon University(formerly University of Abuja), on Wednesday, the Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer of NALDA, Engr. Cornelius Adebayo, explained that the project is in three phases with the Abuja location having 20 units and one nursery while the one located in Shagamu, Ogun State has 30 units with one nursery as well. Ultimately, he said the number will be upped to 50 units both in the University and the Shagamu location.
One green house is expected to produce between two to three tons of vegetables.
"The greenhouse project is in three phases, and this is because we realised the problem we have with vegetables production. We decided to approach Mr President for approval which he gave to us for the mega and the high-tech greenhouses. We are supposed to have three high-tech greenhouses, large, temperature controlled, high-tech greenhouses across the country, and we are supposed to have what we call the normal net greenhouses, which you can see here.
"We have about 20 units, with one nursery. In Shagamu, in Ogun State, we have 30 withone nursery also. We have a packing house where you can clean and package the produce, and we have cold storage also attached to the packing house.
It's fully solarised, solar energy functionality.
"The idea of these greenhouses is to makevegetables available, closer to the people, and strategically, we put one in Giri,because we understand the Abuja market as one of the biggest markets for this.
Lagos, we put one in Shagamu. across the Lagos axis in the Shagamu-Epe cluster, where we are als supporting other greenhouse owners around Shagamu and Epe and that area to also increase their capacity," he said.
He said the greenhouse facilities are targeted at the youth population.
"We have a lot of our youth around, not engaged. These are the some of initiatives that we can use to engage our youth. I'm sure if one person has two of these net houses, he probably wouldn't have known where he would find these sort of resources to dol this.But the government has put it forward for them to thrive.
This is the pilot phase we are doing. In fact, we have in Gombe, we have in Katsina. Our selection is intentional.
"We have built a vegetable market in Gombe, which we are going to launch very soon inpartnership with the Gombe State Government. So we have also put one of those clusters in Gombe, meaning we hope that cluster will be able to service the tomato international market.
"So hopefully, we are in the process of land clearing now. After land clearing, we will do boreholes, and water harvest systems."
Adebayo also disclosed that the third layer of all this is "the layer where we have the open field vegetable farming, and we have decided that we are going to do minimum of 10 hectares per federal constituency.
"Now, when you do this, regular pepper, vegetables, and greens would be available , that one is mainly in support of women. This one is targeted at youth, but the ones in the constituency is mainly targeted at women, where you can attach, let's say, for every 10 hectares, 100 women, and you do a plot allocation for them, where they can plant."
Already, he revealed that a total of sixteen 16 locations, from Cross River toKwara, to Taraba, to Plateau, among others have been picked for the roll out of this open field initiative.
"We believe that with this three layer-approach, we would be able to solve a lot of the vegetable availability.
As you know that during certain period in Nigeria, around March, April, you have high price of tomatoes, high price of pepper. So with this, I think we can decentralize production, make them closer to the people, reduce the cost of transportation,reduce the post-harvest losses in the process of transporting them."
For better efficiency and far-reaching output and productivity, he appealed to state governors and communities to make more land available for the project while putting into consideration demand.
"Of course, if we have more land, that's why we are reaching out to our state governors, the FCT minister, if they can support with some land. Even communities, then we can roll out and put more clusters," Adebayo stressed.