The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Kwara State  has trained 240 youth farmers on use of sprayers for weeds and pest control in the farm.

The beneficiaries cutting across the 16 local government areas were selected through the state Agricultural Development Project (ADP) office, FADAMA and Maize Growers’ Association of Nigeria.

They are expected to be given a sprayer each free of charge at the end of the training which would expose to them precautions on the use of sprayer so as not to get injured or kill people’s crops.   

Speaking with newsmen on the training, the state Director of the Ministry, Mr Adebisi Buhari, explained that the training was aimed at empowering the youths to be engaged through helping farmers and themselves to spray their farms.

He said: "We want to gather young people, train them on the use of sprayers, especially for weeds and other pest control and we are targeting the youths because at the end of the day, we want them to form a spraying gang.

"We expect that when they get back to their locality, they will form gangs, may be about three or four of them would come together, any time they find job, they go together to do the spraying. By that they are partially engaged and they can also use it on their farm and we are giving them the sprayer free after the training."