The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund’s) Centre of Excellence in Integrated Farming System (TCoEIFS) Federal Polytechnic Bauchi is ready to partner government, non-governmental organisations and other relevant bodies in providing short term training, skills and certification in integrated farming system.
The Director the of the TETFund Centre of Excellence in Integrated Farming System, Dr. Kolawole Richards stated this during the inaugural meeting of the staff of the Centre which took place at the Polytechnic yesterday.
Dr. Richards said the Centre has since swung into action in order to meet the basic readiness specifications of the TETFund with visits to organisations within Bauchi and the entire North East subregion with proposals for collaborations in smart agriculture which according to him was the future of agricultural value chain globally.
He said that the Centre has assembled a crop of professionals who will serve as Technical Advisory Committee that will be in charge of providing directions to be taken in fishery, husbandry, nutrition and dietetics as well as post-harvest technology.
Also speaking during the meeting, Deputy Director of the Centre, Dr. Aliyu Gadam said in order to be more resourceful, the activities Centre will be centred around the triple helix model which seeks to bring together the academia, government and industry for the overall socio-economic development of the society.
He added that the kind of interventions to be expected from the Centre will be such that will expose trainees to the practical rudiments of integrated farming system instead of the theoretical approach which is the order of the day in most skills acquisition centres across the country.
It will be recalled that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) had given approval to for siting of its Centre of Excellence for North East at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi to lead its contemporaries in the region in initiating problem-solving researches for economic development of region and the country at large.
