An agricultural seeds production expert, Mr George Kabutha has urged farmers to explore opportunities in public and private agricultural insurance schemes towards taming risks on agricultural investment and enhancing food security.
The seed expert made the appeal in an interaction with journalists in Zaria, Kaduna State.
Mr. Kabutha noted that climate factors such as drought or flooding pose a lot of risk to farmers’ investment, hence the need for them to leverage on the opportunities offered by agricultural insurance schemes.
According to him, plans has reached an advanced stage by Value Seeds Company to bring a private agricultural insurance firm to offer cover for the farmers using his seed varieties during the next rain-fed farming season.
“In 2021/2022 farming season, Value Seeds bears the burden for the insurance on behalf of the farmers when some of the fields were attacked by Fall Army-Worm.
“For instance, if a farmer invests N300,000 at his farm, he will settle two or three per cent of the total investment to the insurance firm for a cover in case of loss to investment,” he explained.
George Kabutha said climate change is also a reality.
“We can no longer accurately determine the number of rainfall we will receive or cessation of rainfall,” he added.
He noted with dismay that constant recycling of seeds by farmers hinders high yield of farm produce after cropping season.
He added that the seed adoption culture has a negative impact on the nation’s food security.
“Value Seeds is however working with relevant public and private sectors to encourage farmers to adopt improved seeds towards harnessing food and crop production.
“Currently, we are working with out-growers in Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Benue, Nasarawa, Jigawa states and FCT in addition to direct production of the seeds for mass production,” he stated.
Mr. Kabutha said access to finance is another major challenge to farmers that must be addressed to improve food production.
He added that as an expert with a specialized organization, he has trained a cohort of out growers on financial skills, and given them access to input and markets for their produce.
“The training on financial skills was to enable the out growers understand that the outgrowing is a business, hence the need for them to save a certain portion of their money for the next farming season.
“The training has yielded results as the cohort of the trained out growers buy 100 per cent of their farm input in advance for the next farming season,” he pointed out.
Kabutha assured the out growers that Value Seeds would uptake the farm produce from them, “that is we give them the market” .
He said Value Seeds is working in collaboration with key stakeholders in the agricultural sector to ensure that farmers observe good agronomic practices to enable them quality seeds.
“Accordingly, Value Seeds intends to reach 10 million smallholder farmers before 2035 so far it has reached over five million smallholder farmers in terms of quality seeds, ” he added.
