The Federal Government of Nigeria, in collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, has empowered no fewer than 121,000 smallholder farmers across nine states in the country with farming inputs, as part of efforts to ensure food security in the benefiting states, The Courage.
The National Programme Coordinator of the FGN/IFAD Value Chain Development Programme, Fatima Aliyu, disclosed this on Thursday in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, during the 11th supervision mission of the programme in the state.
Aliyu noted that the programme focuses on the production, processing, and marketing of rice, cassava, and other crops on a sustainable basis. She mentioned the nine benefiting states as Nasarawa, Anambra, Benue, Ebonyi, Ogun, Niger, Taraba, Kogi, and Enugu.
She added that the implementation in these states aims to transform the lives of smallholder farmers by creating job opportunities for women and youths, thereby increasing the incomes of poor rural households.
The National Programme Coordinator further explained that the VCDP had established a Rice Innovation Centre for rice processing in the Ashangwa community of Lafia Local Government Area, as well as an aggregation centre to address the storage of farm produce, among other projects across the state.
“The main objective of the VCDP is to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in our benefiting states. Today, we have visited our project sites and assessed the projects being managed by the farmers.
“The beneficiaries are farmer groups and cooperatives, and all the facilities belong to them and are meant to improve their livelihoods.
“In all the interventions, the farmer groups paid 30 per cent of the total cost of the equipment bought for rice and cassava processing. This is to enable them to gain full ownership of the equipment.
“We give priority to women and youth. We are happy that many of them are now employers of labour, creating wealth, and contributing to societal growth,” she added.
Also speaking, the Director of the Project Coordinating Unit, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Kush Kukwi, expressed satisfaction with the level of project implementation in the state.
“The visit to the state is positive because we have witnessed the rice processing centre and other facilities put in place to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers. I commend the VCDP for its efforts to better the lives of farmers in Nasarawa State and other parts of the country,” he said.
Kukwi further urged the beneficiaries to sustain the production, processing, and marketing of the rice and cassava value chain even after the programme concludes in the state.
Earlier, the Nasarawa State Programme Coordinator of the VCDP, Eunice Adgidzi, while welcoming dignitaries from the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, and other parts of the country, said the programme commenced implementation in the state in July 2020 across communities in Lafia, Doma, Wamba, Nasarawa, and Karu Local Government Areas.
She further explained that the programme focuses on four mainstreaming areas: gender and youth, nutrition, financial inclusion, and climate change.
“Since inception to date, the VCDP has supported a total of 4,023 farmers engaged in different enterprises within the rice and cassava value chains. These include 2,364 males and 1,659 females, of which 1,370 are youths,” she added. One of the beneficiaries, who spoke on behalf of the others, Bitrus Alaku, thanked the FGN and IFAD for regularly empowering them with farming inputs, adding that the implementation of the VCDP in the state had reduced poverty and boosted food security in his community.
