The Ogun Agricultural Development Programme said it would reach about 360,000 farmers with improved agricultural technology and innovation, to increase their productivity in 2013.

The Programme Manager, Mr Ibikunle Onasanya, gave the figure in an interview with newsmen in Abeokuta recently.

He said the programme would focus on six priority crops including cassava, rice, cotton, oil palm and cocoa.

Onasanya said the government had procured heavy equipment, including tractors, which had been a major challenge to increased production.

Onasanya said that the agency would encourage a shift from the old method of rice production from the up land to the low land variety.

“In the past, our farmers have been concentrating on up land rice production. But this year, we will encourage a paradigm shift to low land rice production.  “The low land rice production will yield four times the yield of upland rice varieties,” he said.

The programme manager said the Ogun government would focus on the promotion of improved technology in livestock production, fish farming and agro-forestry.

Onasanya, however, advised farmers in the state to register and be captured in the national farmer’s database, to further boost farming.

“This will enable the farmers to benefit from the government and move agricultural production forward,” he said.