The acting Executive Director, Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute, Mr. Samuel Afolayan, has urged all levels of government and the Central Bank of Nigeria to increase their investment and support for agricultural development, industrialisation and food security.

The view was canvassed on Thursday at the commencement of the disbursement of N1m seed fund to participating communities in ARMTI's Village Alive Development Initiation in Fufu, Ilorin South Local Government Area of Kwara State.

About 192 farmers in 16 groups were expected to benefit from the initiative, the institute said.

Afolayan also appealed to the National Assembly to make legislations that would make the environment more conducive for agric business players including farmers and investors.

He urged them to appropriate more money to agro-related organisations, just as he stressed the need for state governments to implement more agricultural development policies and programmes.

He also said that the CBN was actually facilitating funds and creating the enabling environment for agric business players.

He noted that under the CBN programmes, there were many products which the people could benefit from, part of which, he said was the agric credit guarantee scheme.

He stated that ARMTI chose it to support farmers and other rural dwellers.

He appealed to the CBN to make more money available and put in more products that would be attractive and encourage people to go into agric business.

But the CBN has identified lack of access to finance as a limiting factor to harnessing the economic potential of the real sector.

The Director, Development Finance Department of the CBN, Mr. Paul Eluhaiwe, said the real sector had been noted to trigger economic growth and development.

Eluhaiwe, who was represented by an official of the bank, Mr.  Tony Ogwu, added that urgent action needed to be taken to address the identified constraints, by devising a mechanism for unlocking the flow of funds and other financial services to the sector.

He said the CBN had over the years initiated and deployed a number of products and schemes aimed at ensuring that different sectors of the economy had access to adequate and affordable funds for their productive activities.

Eluhaiwe also stated that the CBN had always supported capacity building of entrepreneurs in the Small and Medium Enterprises and the micro-finance sub-sectors through the establishment of Entrepreneurship Development Centres in all the geo-political zones of the country.

The Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, said vast economic potential lay in the capacities to harness the nation's abundant agricultural resources, adding that with the adoption of modern agro-technology and practices, agricultural growth and industrialisation were achievable in the short term.

Ahmed, who was represented by the Commissioner of Agriculture, Mr. Olabode Olayemi, said the state government was enhancing the capacity of farmers to move up into commercial farming with the provision of affordable credit under the Kwara entrepreneurship model through which N250m had so far been disbursed to cooperative groups.

He stated that the Federal Government and the Kwara State government had initiated moves to shift the focus of citizens as beneficiaries from an oil based-economy to agric driven economy.