The National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) is setting up greenhouses across major cities to increase the availability of vegetables all year round in the country.
The Executive Secretary/CEO, National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) Cornelius O. Adebayo while inspecting one of the projects at the University of Abuja yesterday said the aim was to make sure vegetables are grown closer to the major markets.
‘Here we have about 20 units, with one nursery. In Shagamu, in Ogun State, we have 30 with one nursery also. You can see we have a parking house, where you can clean and package the produce. And we have cold storage also attached to the parking house. It’s fully solarized (solar energy functionality). The idea of this greenhouse is to make vegetables available closer to the people,’ Mr Adebayo said.
The ES said the agency strategically put one in Shagamu targeting Lagos, which is the biggest market for vegetables.
Mr Adebayo said the agency is also supporting other greenhouse owners along the Shagamu-Ekpe Cluster to increase their capacity adding that most of these facilities are not going to be run by NALDA but given to young people that understand how to run them.
In addition to the greenhouses project, NALDA said it was embarking on the open field vegetable production targeting a minimum of 10 hectares per federal constituency, which would be run mainly by women.
‘You can see this one is targeted at the youth. But the ones in the constituencies are mainly targeted at women,’ Mr Adebayo stated, adding that for every 10 hectares, about 100 women can be engaged.
‘So we’re providing land clearing. We’ve already picked 16 locations. First, we went to Kwara, Taraba and Plateau, where we are rolling out this open field initiative.
‘And they are currently clearing those lands. Now, we are going to provide irrigation for the women. We are going to provide parking houses and cold storage.
‘We believe that with this three-layered approach, we would be able to solve a lot of the vegetable availability problems. As you know, during a certain period in Nigeria, you have a high price of tomatoes, high price of pepper. So with this, I think we can decentralize production, make things closer to the people, and reduce the cost of transportation,’ he added.