By Omotayo Edubi
Niger State government and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) have joined forces to work towards a sustainable and food secure agric system in the state.
AGRA’s Associate Program Officer, Mr. Godswill Aguiyi, revealed this to newsmen yesterday in Abuja. According to him, part of the schemes AGRA is having with the state government is implementing associations which have to do with activities in the value chain.
He noted that they are performing workable actions to scale up value chain for farmers as well as provide food security, and make readily available farm products, including machineries for smallholder farmers.
He said: “AGRA is implementing the consortium project which has to do with the activities in the value chain. We have various partners working on the different aspects of the agricultural value chain.
“For this project which we started in 2017 and concluded this year, we focused on the value chain of rice. We had partners who focused on creating access to seeds, partners who focused on the extension aspect, and partners who focused on giving the farmers access to fertilizers.
“These were the basic components, although we also had non-funded partners as part of the consortium such as Niger State Agriculture and Mechanization Development Authority (NAMDA) and the Rice Farmers Association.
“The partners who were most efficient were the seed companies, agro – dealers and extension agents.
“The initiative was aimed at getting farmers to understand good agronomic practices and field technologies such as line spacing, the use of improved seeds, effective fertilizer application and best practices in the post-harvest area such as threshing and harvesting. We targeted one hundred and fifty six thousand farmers in the state and were able to reach them all, with different levels of intervention. “
On collaborations with the state government and businesses to enable access to finance, capacity training to increase production for smallholder farmers, Aguiyi stated that, “In terms of institutional collaborations, AGRA supported Niger State’s Ministry of Agriculture in a project called the State Capacity Strengthening project to strengthen their staff and institutional capacity to achieve their mandate. With our support, they were able to develop their agricultural policy and agriculture investment plan, as well as other policy documents.
“For over twenty years, they hadn’t had any agricultural policy until AGRA stepped in. This policy has now given the state a road map to transform the state’s agriculture.
“We also supported the training of staff and helped them to get work equipment such as computers. In addition, there has been an attitudinal change in terms of how they engage partners in the budget process making it more inclusive. I think this was a very significant partnership.”
He added that: “I believe I’ve already covered collaboration with the state government. On impact made, I will take it from the first objective of the consortium project which was to increase productivity and income of farmers.
“Based on the evaluation that was conducted towards the end of the project, it was observed that the productivity of the farmers we worked with improved from the baseline of 2.5mt of rice to 4mt and above in all the locations where we worked, so I can say that one impact made was improved productivity which was also reflected in the income of the farmers.
“Secondly, increased access of farmers to farm inputs like improved seeds, and agrochemicals. For example, we supported the agro-dealers to have shops which we described as the last mile contact with the farmers, especially in communities which previously had none of those shops.”