The Oyo State government is set to explore opportunities in greenhouse technology to enhance tomato production in the state, the Director-General of the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency and Executive Adviser on Agribusiness to Governor Seyi Makinde, Dr. Debo Akande, has said.

Akande made this known on Friday during a visit to Makinde by a Dutch delegation led by the Consul-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nigeria, Mr. Michel Deelen.

According to Akande, the governor had already given a marching order for the initiative, which aims to establish about 50 greenhouses for tomato production in the state to complement the efforts of smallholder farmers cultivating in open fields.

These remarks were contained in a release issued on Friday by the Special Adviser (Media) to the Oyo State Governor, Dr. Sulaimon Olanrewaju, and made available to journalists in Ibadan, the state capital.

The OYSADA DG stated that the Netherlands delegation was ready to collaborate with Oyo State on tomato production. He also noted that the state had made significant strides in the agriculture value chain, particularly in cassava production.

He further explained that following Makinde’s recent trip to Ethiopia, where he addressed the African Business Forum, the state was also focusing on soya bean production. He added that the Netherlands delegation’s visit would provide Oyo State with an opportunity to expand tomato production on a large scale.

Akande said, “This is probably going to be the best thing that will happen to our state in recent times; the evolution that is happening in the agribusiness sector.

“What we have now is that Oyo State is working on a diverse value-chain where we are working strongly on cassava. We are good at that. We also have the marching order to start working on soya beans because of what we came up with in our meeting in Ethiopia and the African Business Forum.

“We are already developing an accelerated system around soya bean transformation. Now, the next opportunity that is coming is about horticulture and this is speaking to tomatoes.

“It is not as if we have not been doing something about tomatoes, but we have not done enough. So, this visit by the Dutch government to His Excellency is providing the opportunity for us to accelerate and expand on what we are doing on tomatoes.

“We all know what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic when there was a gap between demand and supply from the South to the North over tomatoes and we don’t want that to happen again.

“The second thing is that we always know the volatility in terms of pricing tomatoes at a particular season in the year when it becomes so expensive, and at a point, there is excess. That should not be happening at all. We should have tomatoes all year at a reasonable price.

“People who have mastered tomato production in the world are the Israelis and the Dutch. Today, we have the Netherlands and we are willing to learn how they have done it, because they have a massive production of tomatoes.

https://punchng.com/oyo-netherlands-collaborate-on-tomato-production/