Agriculture is big business..

Agriculture is taking center stage with more and more countries ,corporations,technology industries racing to dive in and make profit from the green gold. Farming for sustenance has been greatly out matched by innovative farming methods which has proven to be a faster, cheaper and easier way of providing food . Agriculture has benefited from technology with biocrops, hydroponics, drones,precision farming and most especially urban farming. The need to utilize available space to produce food crops has stemmed the innovation in urban farming such sack farming,trough farming, vertical farming on terraces and roof tops and green house technology. This all points to the fact that land though a necessity is a scare resource and various initiatives have been put in place to access this resource. In Nigeria to further encourage more people to practice agriculture,the river basin development authority of various states have made land readily available for urban farming. The Ogun-Osun River Basin Authority which covers Lagos, Ogun, Osun and Oyo States the authority allocates a portion of the land to farmers on a lease-based agreement,after paying the stipulated fees. The river basin development authority have irrigation systems that supply water to the farms and tractor services for plowing and cultivation at highly subsidized rates. They also provide fertilizers and seedlings are also available at subsidized rates as well,farmlands are also readily accessible and affordable accommodation for workers and security of the land is also guaranteed. The federal government of Nigeria in a bid to promote agriculture is set to launch a graduate agriculture scheme in 12 River Basins in the country as 50 graduates are expected to be trained per river basin in various areas of agricultural production. continue The leasing of land for agricultural purposes to foster food production is just taking prominence among the citizens,its this same policy that the Zimbabwean and South African farmers have used for years in the country for farming and breeding purposes. This system has also been harnessed in Japan to foster food production ,with traditional family farms on the wane, corporations are increasingly entering the agriculture sector, taking advantage of an updated law allowing them to lease farmland across the country. At the end of 2015, more than 2,000 companies were operating in the farm sector, a roughly five-fold increase from before the farmland law was revised in 2009, according to the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry. Among them is Morishige Bussan Co., a food wholesaler in the city of Saitama that’s growing perilla on a 6-hectare patch of hilly land in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture.continue