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By Chinyere Anyanwu
As part of its agricultural ecological project, Lafarge Africa Plc, has carried out agro-ecology training and provided oil palm seedlings for planting to farmers in its six host communities in southern part of Cross River State.
Lafarge Africa’s Agric Ecology project, which targets all the host communities in close proximity to its plants across the country, aims to improve productivity and livelihoods, enhance resilience and living standards of the target communities through the deployment and adoption of socioeconomic and technical innovations on sustainable agriculture and natural resources management. Speaking during the training programme to flag-off the project held at Ekorinim, Calabar, recently, the Plant Manager, Lafarge Africa Plc, Sotirios Valsamakis, revealed that the gesture, which is part of the company’s community development interventions, is community driven and will be managed by a cluster of community members duly selected by the various communities.
The plant manager who was represented by the company’s Communications and Public Affairs Manager, South East Operations, Inyang Bassey, noted that the workshop, which is in collaboration with the Bridge Leadership Foundation, is to encourage participants embrace agriculture as a career and equip them with the necessary skills to build capacity in the area of oil palm farming and ensure sustainable oil palm production in the country.
He advised the communities, which include Akwa Ikot Effanga, Mfamosing, Akansoko, Abiati, Mbobui, and Ekong Annaku to make judicious use of the empowerment, which he said, is a deliberate effort to bridge the gap on dependency on white collar jobs by the people.
“This is basically one of our community development interventions which is derived from our sustainability pillars that focuses on economic empowerment. Today, the world is talking about agriculture and we believe that providing this agricultural exposure and intervention will go a long way to ensure we have more people that will not be expecting or looking forward to white collar jobs but taking agriculture as a major means of livelihood.”
He added that the company did not stop at the level of training but would also support the farmers with farm inputs such as improved varieties of oil palm seedlings, herbicides, pesticides, fertilisers and other services as well as how to market their produce. To ensure maximum impact of the community-based participatory project, the participants were also taken through actual farm demonstrations and planting of the seedlings at the various designated farms across the six host communities. Also speaking at the event, the Programme Coordinator, Bridge Leadership Foundation, Joshua Ogar, stated that all measures have been put in place to ensure the smooth running of the oil palm farming in the host community including the training, implementation and monitoring strategies, adding that with the training, the communities can become core producers and marketers of palm oil in the near future.
For their part, the beneficiaries who were trained on Farm Culture by Dr. Elvis Udey, of Chrisel Farms Ltd and on Oil Palm Nursery and Management by Ekoh Christopher of Zill Organic Growers, expressed gratitude to Lafarge Africa, saying they are now ready to run with the knowledge acquired.
