Kogi State government
has said that adequate compensation would be paid to owners of the land recently acquired for the establishment of the Staple Crop Processing Zone.
Governor Idris Wada gave the assurances while conducting the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akinwumi Adesina and a team of investors from CARGILL in USA, round the processing zone at Alape village, Kabba.
He said that a committee had already been set up to work out a modality for the payment of the compensation.
The governor lauded the Federal Government (FG) for establishing the processing zone in Kogi and described the development as a model of cooperation between the Federal Government, state, local governments and traditional institutions.
Wada urged other states to emulate Kogi, noting that the over 200 hectares of land had already been cultivated with cassava.
He said that the state intended to cultivate 15, 000 more hectares of cassava between now and the next couple of years.
The governor, expressed delight that the CARGILL, the core investor in the project, had sent a team to assess the readiness of the government to fulfil  its side of the MOU earlier signed.
He said that the staple crop processing zone, which was dedicated to the production of cassava, would produce 90, 000 metric tonnes of cassava a year.
He explained that the figure was the basic raw material required by CARGILL for the establishment of a 100 million dollar (N.6 billion) cassava processing plant in Lokoja, the state capital.
Wada said that the processing plant would entail a starch factory and a sweetener production plant, which would provide thousands of jobs and benefit small and medium scale farmers in the state..
He thanked the host community for their cooperation and understanding and urged them to assist workers of CARGILL and other government officials who would be working in the area.
The Vice President of CARGILL Group, Mr Emery Koening, expressed delight at the massive work already done at the zone by both the federal and the state governments.
He added that the intention of CARGILL to invest in the country’s agriculture sector was to help farmers to achieve prosperity, and that he was impressed by the quality of leadership shown.
The Obaro of Kabba, Oba Michael Olabayo, who responded on behalf of the community, thanked the federal and state governments for choosing Alape community for the project.
He said that traditional rulers in the area would complement the efforts of the government in the area of security of equipment and workers, to ensure the realisation of the projects within the scheduled time.