Farmers have embraced agroecology, a branch of agriculture that promotes farming practices which mitigate climate change, promotes growing of crops naturally without use of inorganic fertilizer.
Farmers at a recent training in Abuja, welcomed the training on agroecology and also sought for government and private sector support.
Speaking to farmers, Ado Nasir from Jigawa state said the training has educated them on how necessary and useful agroecology is to farmers.
He said that adopting agroecology will create conducive environment for farmers to farm and make profit, adding that it will also boost employment opportunities.
He said, ‘’This is because Inorganic fertilizers are used only once. The cost of buying inorganic fertilizer is high and you can’t make profit. Agroecology will help farmers to produce at a profit.’’
One of the facilitators, Mr Samuel Robert Kwasari, CEO of Build the Help Foundation said that his agro forestry project, located at Damokosa village in Kwali area council, FCT is set up to change the narrative of the usual conventional agriculture which is input based.
He said, “For us we want to practice agriculture in a natural wa,y which means we can get our inputs from our farm. Normally we call it zero budget farming because out of your farm you’ll get your seeds as well as fertilizer.
“We try to put money into the hands of the farmers instead of it out of their cash. It is a generative method of agriculture where everything happens naturally as against the conventional which is input based agriculture.
Related Posts
Speaking on the Economic advantage of his programme, he said that it is a three way thing.
“First, the revenue of the farmer increases because the yield of the farmers increases then the social life is better and the environmental impact can be seen.
“We have 10 hectares of land and over the past three years we have planted 45000 trees, the trees do not only take care of the environment but add to the farmers revenue.
“Assuming we do 70% viability after four or five years the farmer is looking at nothing less than 50 to 60 million income from the trees and this is something we can prove because on one hectare of land, we plant about 500 eucalyptus which is one among 18 trees.
“If you take after 4 to 5 years, you can harvest your eucalyptus and sell them for a minimum of 30000 naira, we are talking about 15m in a period of 5 years. On one tree alone, the farmers ends about 1 million naira, 50, 000 naira.
“Because of the long term practice on conventional agriculture, we cant tell them to stop using them we want to show better way of using fertilizer and through trainings like this we will be able to educate on that without using chemical fertilizer that destroys the farm The intention of the govt is good but we want to do it the better way to show the farmers.
Joyce Brown, Programme director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, said, “we are organising the training for them to do away with chemicals, GMOs and all sorts of things under the industrial agricultural system.
“This is very helpful to farmers, they will be able to improve their health and the ecology too.
“We have worked with many farmers and they have attested that chemicals are destructive to their yields . With agoecology they have been able to see that yields can be produced naturally.”
