By; SANI ALIYU, Zaria
The Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Programme Officer in Kaduna State, Dr. Esther Ibrahim, has said that its investments would see to increasing farmers productivity, resilience and supporting them to respond to issues of climate change.
She said the aim is to transform the food system in Africa, of which Nigeria is the most populous and faced with issues of climate change.
According to her, the project would support 300,000 small holder farmers in Kaduna on crop value chain, especially maize, among others such as soya beans and tomatoes, to strengthen market participation.
“The project is a consortium with other critical stakeholders along the value chain to provide expertise, market, finance and extension support.
“The overall aim is to ensure that Africa and Nigeria is able to feed itself with quality food,” she said.
She explained that they were leveraging on the existing work of Kaduna State with partners like ‘Tomato Jos’ to create enabling market for farm produce.
In its quest, AGRA has launched a website on building smallholder farmers resilience and reducing vulnerability in maize-based sythem in Kaduna State.
Earlier, the Kaduna State Commissioner for Agriculture, Malam Ibrahim Husain, said the consortium which is specially for maize value chain would do greatly in the state.
He noted that after the intervention, the yield would increase maximally.
He noted that the Kaduna State Government has attracted investors with one of them, the OPC completing a blending plant.
“They have done about 35,000 soil tests which are suitable for different crops and produced maps for different value chain,” he revealed.
He noted that the project was timely due to the Russian Ukraine war that has affected production of grains, especially wheat.
“40 per cent of wheat grown in the world comes from the region, and in Kaduna, we have commenced bridging the grain deficit and this programme will go along way,” he said.
He commended AGRA and hopes they achieve the sole objective of the project by impacting positively on small holder farmers.
In his remarks, the Executive Director of the National Agricultural Extension and Research Liason Services (NAERLS), Prof. Emmanuel Ikani said their role as part of the consortium, is to ensure that they give the farmers the knowledge required in improving yield.
“We educate the farmers through the media and other means and supervise them on their farms on the techniques they were taught towards improving yield,” he explained.
In his address, the AGRA Principal Investigator, Prof. Chris Daudu said the project will increase their revenue and profit from farming, service provision and non processing.
Daudu added that indirect economic multiplying effect and investment will potentially drive the growth in the manufacturing industry as demand for mechanized threshing services increases.
He said, the investment will target dissemination of results to the different stakeholders also to create a meter database as well to develop a website.
The Principal Investigator said Kaduna State Agricultural Development Agency (KADA) has been supportive with structure, extension agents, upscaling and management of CBA’s.
It would be recalled that AGRA Kaduna State has been working with NAERLS, Extension Africa, IITA , Premier Seeds and Pearl Mutual, among others to come up with the project in the state.
