C’River To Create 20,000 Agric Jobs

The Cross River State
Government has pledged to create more than 20,000 jobs through agriculture in 2016.
The state Commissioner for Agriculture, Prof. Anthony Eneji, revealed this in an interview with The Tide source in Calabar, recently.
According to him, the jobs would be created through the production of cocoa, rice, rubber and palm oil.
He added that the state has begun the process of regenerating the oil palm and Cocoa estates, which also procuring 10,000 hectares of land for rice production.
Eneji added that the improved cocoa hybrid which matures between 18 months and two years would be procured and distributed to the farmers in the state.
The commissioner said the state authorities are already raising oil palm seedlings in large quantity to support the ageing palm plantations in the various palm estates across the state.
He also said that the government was also into rice production already, with a juicy partnership coming from China couple with equipment and finance.
The agric boss emphasised that the state government plans to allow the people of the state to drive its economy to enable it fast-track alternative sources of revenue.
The government is already reviewing its rubber plantation with a view to making it more productive in addition to plans to produce not less than 500,000 metric tons of cocoa yearly and be the number one cocoa producing state in Nigeria.