By Kehinde Oluwatayo
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A Memorandum of  Understanding (MoU)between Ondo State Agricultural Commodities Association (OSACA) and Orbital Solutions Global Services LTD, a private organization to register farmers under the umbrella of OSACA online has been signed.

  Signing for Orbital solutions in Akure recently, the Chief Executive Officer of the organization, Mr Adewale Adegoke said the relationship will afford the farmers access to market, inputs and loans.

  Adegoke who said unavailability of disaggregated data for agriculture is an issue, noted that government is not making any move to put these together.

 He added that the private sector is essential in driving the process.

  His words: “Orbital Solutions has developed a platform called Agro Exchange which establishes market linkages for rural farmers, small holder farmers and even large scale farmers.

 “We have partnership with Development Agenda for Western Nigeria and Technical Centre for Agric and Rural Corporation Netherlands.

 “With the digital profiling we are about to start with OSACA, we will be able to put the data of each farm online, the location, boundary, picture of farmer, information about harvest state among other information”.

 Adegoke said there is a mobile platform which is part of Agro Exchange that has a crop calendar. He added that the platform sends out automated monthly notification on farmers that are about to harvest.

 According to him, aggregators, tractor owners and other stakeholders will be getting the notification and will be able to target the farmers through his organization and OSACA.

  While saying agric tech has come to stay, Adegoke said there is no need of doing agriculture in the manual fashion anymore adding that “we have done that for a long time and farmers have not being earning what they should earn.

 “Now we want to use a more empirical approach to be able to ensure that farmers’ productivity improve significantly, is standardized and made attractive in the market so that they can earn their investment on the farm”.

 The Chairman of OSACA, Mr Gbenga Obaweya who signed for the association said there are tremendous benefits for the farmers under the arrangement.

  Highlighting the benefits, Obaweya said access to market, credit and extension services are among numerous benefits they will enjoy.

 He described Orbital Solutions as  reliable saying that it has working relationship with credible organizations.

  “We considered Orbital Solutions because we have good knowledge of him, we have seen the platform he created, the profiling he had done and some farmers captured in some other locations. So we have some level of confidence in him”.

 “You see, international exposure cannot be joked with. I have a personal experience of registration I did on other things I do and the tremendous impact it has on them”.

 Obaweya who said that the farmers have a choice advised them to key into the arrangement for their own benefit.

Also speaking, a farmer who is a partner to Orbital Solutions, Mr Abimbola Akinwunmi said agric tech is what they do in Western countries and they get result and ensure food security.

 He added that agric tech is the only way through which farmers can reap the benefit of their labour.