By Roseline Okakah

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Ondo State Commissioner for Agriculture and Forestry, Mr. Olayato Aribo has revealed that the government has declassified 100,000 hectares of land for agriculture.

The Commissioner revealed this in an interview with The Hope.

He said the lands were supposed to be forest reserves, but have been declassified for agriculture so that it can be allocated to people who wants to farm.

He said government also created hectares of land for cocoa plantation and it has been allocated to people to encourage them to do more.

He advised farmers to see farming and agriculture as business and also called for businessmen to come into agriculture.

“What we are preaching is that we need businessmen to come into agriculture. We need people like retirees, private big men who have the money and capacity to go into large plantations to come into agriculture.

“That’s the only way to go so that they would do what they need to do, fight from the federal and represent us very well”, Aribo stressed.

The Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Agric and Agric business, Pastor Akin Olotu highlighted the efforts of the government in agriculture particularly in cocoa production.

“This administration has given out 3 million cocoa seedlings to farmers. If we have just 50% out of the three million that are surviving today, it means we are having 100 of thousands of cocoa trees that are springing up and we will begin to see the impact just like in oil palm” he explained.

Olotu advised cocoa farmers to do it right for bountiful yields, saying cocoa market is international.