By Peter Dada
The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State, has said it is intensifying investments in agriculture and technology-driven food production as part of efforts to address Nigeria’s growing food insecurity challenge.
The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Adenike Oladiji, disclosed this on Friday during an inspection of ongoing projects on the campus, noting that many of the initiatives were funded through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
She said, “We have visited the farm where we think that as a university of technology, as a university that has a long-standing school of agriculture, school of engineering, and we are known for sciences.
“As a kind of university, we must do something different to solve the problem of food insecurity in the country.”
Oladiji said the university was deliberately expanding its agricultural infrastructure to strengthen its contribution to national food production, especially in poultry and crop value chains.
“That is one of the things that is driving our vision. Now, with the support of TETFund, we have funds to expand agricultural infrastructure.
“We are expanding the poultry that has gone moribund. We have revived it, and not only revived it, we are expanding what we are doing. We started like a university. We started with 150 birds,” she added.
She explained that the university’s poultry project had grown significantly, adding that production capacity was being scaled up from an initial 150 birds to 500, then 1,000, and now an additional 4,500 birds.
Oladiji said the expansion was aimed at positioning FUTA as a key player in poultry production within Ondo State and beyond.
The Vice-Chancellor also disclosed that the institution now operates a feed mill where students are trained in agricultural production and value addition.
According to her, FUTA has moved away from simply producing and selling raw crops to adopting a more value-driven agricultural model.
“So over the years, we produce corn, and we sell the corn. But we said it is not ideal as a university to produce corn and sell it like the farmers.
“So what we are doing now is we teach them how to produce the corn, we teach them how to make feed mill from the corn through our feed mill industry, and then we also teach them to compound different types of feed for different types of animals.
“So well, we can do for broilers, we can do for layers, we can do for turkey, we can do for fish, and that’s again one of the things we are doing. And besides that, we’re also doing, we’re into crop production. We just visited the greenhouses, again built recently,” she added.
She added that the university also runs greenhouse farming to ensure year-round production of crops such as bell peppers.
Oladiji further said many of the university’s agricultural and research projects were designed in response to the needs of students, staff, and international researchers who visit the institution.
She noted that FUTA had also constructed a dedicated accommodation facility for visiting researchers and accreditation teams to address previous challenges of inadequate lodging on campus.
“We receive researchers, accreditation teams and scholars from across the world regularly, and we felt the university needed a befitting accommodation facility for such visitors,” she said.
Some of the projects inspected include a locally fabricated greenhouse, hostel facilities, teaching and research farms, and laboratory and museum infrastructure.
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