The Commissioner for Agriculture in the state, Dr Adeola Odedina disclosed this during the exhibition of cocoa research produce by the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN), Ibadan on Friday.
Odedina said the move is one of the Governor Dapo Abiodun's administrator's agenda to deal with products delivery as well as take cocoa products up and train farmers and young entrepreneurs on how to add values to cocoa instead of selling in raw alone.
The Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria is an the institution with mandate of cocoa, coffee, cashew, kola, tea development and supporting, collaborating with state for cocoa production.
Odedina also disclosed that the state government has distributed over 60, 000 seedlings of highly matured Cocoa to farmers in the state.
He said "We have registered one hundred and fifty thousand people and within three years we have done over 80, 000. It's a record that's is hard to beat so what we are saying is that people should come up and take up this opportunity.
"One thing that is very bold in the Agricultural agenda of governor Abiodun is that we are going to be improving on our partnership with our collaboration with all agencies in the world responsible for supporting agriculture.
" We have worked with CRIN over the years in our distribution of seedlings to farmers and the governor has made soil available for farmers and we have distributed over 60, 000 seedlings of highly matured cocoa to farmers.
"One of our agenda in Ogun state is also to deal with products delivery so we are taking this product up and train our farmers and young entrepreneurs on how to add values to Cocoa instead of selling in raw alone."
The Executive Director of the Institute, Patrick Adebola represented by an Assistant Director, Dr Eghosa Uwagboe hinted the essence of bringing the institute's programme to Ogun state is to cause a paradigm shift from the era of produce into the era of value addition.
He said the collaboration with Ogun state government is to empower youths and farmers in the state in cocoa production and alleviate job scarcity."
He said the CRIN is also creating awareness for farmers and stakeholders on the opportunities abound in the production of Cocoa.
His words " We are using this event to tell our farmers and all stakeholders in cocoa and all other of our mandate crops that this is the era of paradigm shift. We have to move from the era of produce into the era of value addition that's the essence of bringing this programme to Abeokuta for us to create the awareness to tell farmers and stakeholders that it is not only depending on coca beans that we have been producing that we should also add value.
"Coco Research Institute in collaboration with some other scientists has been able to bring up all products that we have produced and enlightened the farmers and all other stakeholders in the industry to go into value addition so that they will earn more revenue from the production of the produce.
" This is an avenue for the state government to empower the youths by telling them to go into the production of our produce."
