Nigeria should adopt mechanised farming to ensure food security, an agro-allied company, Nutrac, co-founder, Samson Ogbole, has said.
He said Nigeria’s population of about 280 million could not continue to depend on cutlasses and hoes; rather it should adopt technology-infused agriculture.
He said there were several technologies that could be applied in the various value chains to drive soil-less farming.
According to him, soil-less farming involves hydroponic for vegetables and ‘aquaponics’, using fish wastewater for plants and ‘aeroponics’, a process of growing plants in the air or moist area.
Hydroponic farming is the method of growing plants using a soil-less media, which can include a wide variety of examples as: gravel, peat, vermiculite perlite, old rubber tires, rockwool, and expanded clay aggregates.
Ogbole said these devices were affordable technologies that could ease farming, adding that that was the only way to attract youths into agriculture.
He said: “What we are doing is to bring technology into agriculture; we believe that agriculture in the future will not be based on hoes and cutlasses. According to the President of the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina, cutlasses and hoes should now be in the museum. If we want to feed about 198 million people, we cannot do that using hoes and cutlasses, there is the need to infuse technology.
