By Geroge George Idowu
About 40,000 women in Kaduna State have been equipped with skills to grow Vitamin Avariety of maize to meet their nutritional needs.
The women who weredrawn from the 23 local government areas in the state were also equipped with farm smart agricultural practices to improve their yield.
Speaking at a stakeholders engagement meeting in Kaduna, a smallholder woman farmer, Asabe Hassan, explained that in the past, she could only cultivate a quarter of a hectare of maize but could now cultivate two hectare of maize, one hectre of sorghum and one hectare of soya beans.
Asabe said: ” Before, the women in my community, include myself, used to use the traditional methods to cultivate our farms but with the intervention of Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the lives of over 40,000 women have been chnged for the better.
She added that many women have been trained by AGRA on how to grow and process Vitamin A maize among other crops which she said has improved their yield and their lives by extension.
Meanwhile, the Country Director, AGRA Nigeria, Mr. Rufus Idris, while addressing the gathering, emphasized the organisation’s commitment to supporting Nigeria’s food transformation.
According to Idris, the organisation is operating in several African countries, including Nigeria, to ensure affordable, reliable and nutritious food in the continent.
” We are faced with a lot of shocks from climate chnge impacts and those shocks require us to also embrace more of farm smart agricultural practices.
” Consortiums are actully working heavily to help farmers to embrace new innovations, technology that cn mke them a more climate smart and respond to issue of pest, flood and the rest that we are seeing in that space around the period,” he said.