A lecturer in the Ebonyi State University, who is also the founder of Venze Intergrated Farm, Chief Lawrence Adum, has urged the youths in the State to embrace Agriculture as a way of ensuring food security for their families as well as to secure a means of livelihood.
Adum, who gave the charge while interacting with journalists in Abakaliki the state capital, noted that he leant to farm through his experience with his grandfather, and said the merger salary of civil servants across the country is not enough to buy food stuffs as well as to buy the ingredients for the food, which however neccesitated his decision to go into farming business.
"I read mathematics in the University up to my PhD level, I learnt Agricultural practice from my grandfather, I learnt it the traditional way, and since then I have continued to practice what my grandfather taught me, trying to inculcate the modern style of farming.
"Insufficiency of food made me to go go into farming, I recall during the era of president Olusegun Obasanjo as a military head of state, where he introduced operation feed the nation, I feel we don't have sufficient food.
"especially the civil servants, the little money we receive from the office is not enough to buy food and also buy the things to prepare the food with, there is a need for me to Start up something to enable my family have enough to eat, then you add up with the little salary," he said.
He called on the Youths to embrace Agriculture and explained that the sector has the tendency to solve the problem of unemployment in the country and also improve livelihoods.
"Agriculture has a way of solving the problem of unemployment in the country, the youths should not be waiting for the government to employ them.
"ordinarily if I know what I know now i wouldn't have allowed the government to employ me, I advise everyone to go back to the farm, our land is very rich and whatever you put in must bring out something."
However, he commended the role of the Government in the provisions of herbicides and fertilizers to Farmers, but lamented over delay in the distribution, and appealed to the people in charge to ensure honesty and transparent in the process in order to meet up with the Farmers need at a time it's most needed.
"Government do provide herbicides and fertilizers but they do it late, they don't do it between March and may, when Farmers need them more, they bring these things late, that's the problem, if government can be supplying these things on time, it will enable the Farmers to use them when they needed to and it will be nice, " he added.
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