The Oyo State government is set to explore opportunities in greenhouse technology to enhance tomato production in the state, the Director-General of the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency and Executive Adviser on Agribusiness to Governor Seyi Makinde, Dr. Debo Akande, has said.
Akande made this known on Friday during a visit to Makinde by a Dutch delegation led by the Consul-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nigeria, Mr. Michel Deelen.
According to Akande, the governor had already given a marching order for the initiative, which aims to establish about 50 greenhouses for tomato production in the state to complement the efforts of smallholder farmers cultivating in open fields.
These remarks were contained in a release issued on Friday by the Special Adviser (Media) to the Oyo State Governor, Dr. Sulaimon Olanrewaju, and made available to journalists in Ibadan, the state capital.
The OYSADA DG stated that the Netherlands delegation was ready to collaborate with Oyo State on tomato production. He also noted that the state had made significant strides in the agriculture value chain, particularly in cassava production.
He further explained that following Makinde’s recent trip to Ethiopia, where he addressed the African Business Forum, the state was also focusing on soya bean production. He added that the Netherlands delegation’s visit would provide Oyo State with an opportunity to expand tomato production on a large scale.
Akande said, “This is probably going to be the best thing that will happen to our state in recent times; the evolution that is happening in the agribusiness sector.
“What we have now is that Oyo State is working on a diverse value-chain where we are working strongly on cassava. We are good at that. We also have the marching order to start working on soya beans because of what we came up with in our meeting in Ethiopia and the African Business Forum.
“We are already developing an accelerated system around soya bean transformation. Now, the next opportunity that is coming is about horticulture and this is speaking to tomatoes.
“It is not as if we have not been doing something about tomatoes, but we have not done enough. So, this visit by the Dutch government to His Excellency is providing the opportunity for us to accelerate and expand on what we are doing on tomatoes.
“We all know what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic when there was a gap between demand and supply from the South to the North over tomatoes and we don’t want that to happen again.
“The second thing is that we always know the volatility in terms of pricing tomatoes at a particular season in the year when it becomes so expensive, and at a point, there is excess. That should not be happening at all. We should have tomatoes all year at a reasonable price.
“People who have mastered tomato production in the world are the Israelis and the Dutch. Today, we have the Netherlands and we are willing to learn how they have done it, because they have a massive production of tomatoes.
“What they have done is to invest in greenhouses and they use greenhouses in the country because of their temperature, which could be cold and hot. Here, we can use greenhouses because we have demonstrated their use through a private sector company at the Oyo State Transformation Centre at Fasola and we have seen that the greenhouse technology works.
“That company has produced tomatoes via greenhouse technology and it has been supplying to markets in the state but that is not enough. If we are talking about production for consumption within the state, we need to accelerate.
“The partnership with the Dutch government is going to help us accelerate. This is why the governor has given us a marching order. He wants to see about 50 of these greenhouses producing tomatoes in our state to complement what our smallholder farmers are doing in the open field.
“The Dutch government is going to support, while the Oyo State government will continue to provide an enabling environment and the right facilities for this to grow.”
Speaking earlier, the Consul-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Deelen, stated that the delegation that visited Governor Makinde was on a trade mission, which included about 15 Dutch companies specializing in seeds, horticulture, and greenhouse technology.
He said that the visit was to discuss the role of government and explore how they could collaborate with the Oyo State Government to boost horticulture production.
He said, “We brought people from Westland, and other people from the horticulture sector, to exchange information and see how together we can make sure that production of horticulture products increases in Oyo State.
“We felt there is a huge demand in the South-West, not just Ibadan or Lagos. Lagos does not have the landmass to produce all that but Oyo State has.
“The ordinary person on the street tends to gain different things from this partnership if he is interested in horticulture or getting a job in that sector, because it is also about job creation.
“On the other hand, if the average person on the street is a consumer, he will see that the quality of tomatoes and other farm products in the market will increase and that could be visible.”
Similarly, Agricultural Counsellor at the Consulate-General Office, Inge Tenniglo, stated that the Dutch government was willing to collaborate with Nigeria to enhance both the quality and quantity of tomato production.
In the same vein, Senior Manager, International and Economic Affairs, Ima Meijer, noted that the Dutch government believes in sustainable food production and considers greenhouse technology as one of the key ways to achieve it.