rm would boost self-reliance in food production as well as create economic bases and job opportunities for our people.
At the commissioning of the Osun Beef Production outfit (O’Beef) ranch
located at Oloba Farm Settlement in Iwo, he said it was primarily
targeted at boosting agriculture, meat and food production, food
processing and mass agro-based employment. It is also part of a plan to
assist livestock farmers to improve milk and meat production, saying,
plans are afoot to establish similar but lager ranches in Ede (400
hectares) and Ejigbo (1,000 hectares). Land has been acquired for this
purpose and the location would have grazing reserves and cattle hub –
including markets, feed mills. The grazing reserves will help us to
tackle the recurring feud between the Fulani pastoralists and the crop
farmers usually caused as a result of cattle grazing on farms.
Meanwhile, Aregbesola has declared that the country would remain poor
despite the huge income from crude oil as long as the leaders fail to
properly utilise the income to generate employment.
Speaking at
the Education Conference of the National Union of Textile, Garment and
Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN) held in Osogbo, he stated that it
was an illusion to claim that the country is rich.
The
governor said: “As a government we must be able to produce the food we
eat. A government cannot be said to be good if it is incapable of
feeding its own people. In Lagos alone, about 6,000 cattle are
slaughtered daily in the abattoirs, while the remaining five South-West
States combined conservatively accounts for another 6,000 based on their
total population, no state in South-West produces a single one. All
these animals come from the North. We intend to target just 10 per cent
of the Lagos market. The governor described the potential of the beef
market in the Southwest as huge, adding that it could not be waved aside
by any visionary government.”
“This translates to a huge N4.4
billion per annum. This huge market demand for beef, the governor
argued, carries the potential to empower the state and the entire
Southwest people economically through wealth creation.”
For a
start, the ranch, which is being managed by a South African expert in
conjunction with International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
and Faculty of Agriculture, Obafemi Awolowo University, has 1,500 cattle
sourced locally. The farm is being run with the technical direction of
foreign Technical Partners from Zambia and South Africa.
According to the Governor, 30 foreign species of cattle called the
Zambian Boran, would be introduced to the ranch with a view to
genetically crossbreeding them with local ones to get new indigenous
species.
When fully in operation, the ranch, which will be run
on public private partnership basis, will have modern abattoir that
offers services to the people at a lower rate.
It is the objective of this administration in the State of Osun to create the enabling environment that will make this happen.
“We will be dedicating and developing hundreds of hectares of land into
grazing reserves, cattle markets, breeding centres, and fattening hubs.
This will be in addition to the new central abattoirs that we are
developing in selected towns across the state,” Aregbesola said.
It is against this backdrop that the government began a study of the
process to come up with a programme that will be indigenous to the state
and the region. In February 2011, this assignment took them to the
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Ibadan, where they
discussed about building partnerships to help the state develop a robust
framework for implementing an innovative programme that focuses on Beef
Chain Development in Osun. What came out of the interactions between
the Osun team and the ILRI is the abattoir-linked enterprises that
include fattening, breeding and marketing activities.
Hence,
government decided that the strategic option for the state is to adopt
the value chain approach to developing the beef sector in the state,
with a preliminary target, excluding production for local consumption,
of serving a minimum 10 per cent of the Lagos 6,000 cattle per day
market. This, it was gathered, would be achieved through a strategic
initiative incorporating activities such as cattle genetics improvement,
breeding, fattening, slaughter and beef marketing.
With the
resulting strategic discussion with the ILRI, between December 11th and
16th, 2011, Aregbesola led a delegation of selected state government
officials on a tour of the Zambian agricultural industry. Research
revealed that Zambia has practised what could be achieved through
agriculture as a means for creating jobs and wealth for the people.
The first, it was gathered, hinged on gaining a first hand
understanding of the Zambian success story in agricultural development,
as well as to begin the development of the beef sector in Osun. The
programme hit the ground running and this result is the Oloba cattle
ranch, which the governor revealed would not be the only one in the
state as efforts are on to establish more in viable locations in the
state. Oloba Cattle Ranch is about 78.8 hectares in size.
Government also intends to promote the establishment of cattle and ram
feedlots and as such, efforts are in progress to put the feedlot
infrastructure in place to accommodate 1,500 cattle. At the maximum
capacity, this ranch will accommodate up to 10,000 cattle being fattened
at the same time.
Not only that, the Oloba Cattle Ranch would
act as a breeding centre for a foreign breed of cattle known as the
Boran, so as to develop a new breed of cattle that is indigenous to the
South-West by cross-breeding the Zambian-Boran with local breeds such as
the White Fulani and Sokoto Gudali.
The resulting cattle, it
is expected, will have greater capacity to produce meat, making cattle
fattening and beef production a very profitable endeavour for the state.
