By Ayodele Oni
Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde has announced some measures to address the continued soaring of prices of food items in the state.
The governor, had an interactive session with smallholder farmers in the state on purposely to boost food production and arrest inflation,
Here are the governor’s words, “Earlier today, we met with stakeholders on food security to discuss the issues faced by smallholder farmers and traders as it affects food inflation.
“Some of the decisions we reached were that for the next six months, no revenue will be collected on farm produce.
“Revenue collectors will instead be deployed to our borders to collect revenue from those who are taking produce out of Oyo State. We will provide a hotline for people to call if they have any issues.
“We also agreed to liberalize the conditions for accessing low-interest loans from the Agricultural Credit Corporation of Oyo State (ACCOS) to improve access to farmers. We have been disbursing N1 billion to smallholder farmers under our SAfER program.
“We will provide an initial N600 million through the ACCOS to subsidize the cost of hiring tractors. The modalities of how our smallholder farmers can access this subsidy will be worked out and communicated to them.
“In total, we plan to subsidize the clearing of at least 120,000 hectares this planting season.
“We will subsidize haulage costs through the Pacesetter Transport Company so that farmers can get their produce to the markets at a cheaper rate.
“We will also deploy extension workers through the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to support our smallholder farmers on proper agronomic practices to maximize yield.
“Finally, I said a ten-member committee will be set up to monitor and implement these and other decisions that will be made to tackle food inflation. Six members of the committee will be from the stakeholders and four from the government.”
