NAN-AE-18
Farming
By Philomina Attah/Kudirat Ogunyemi
Abuja, Aug. 28, 2017 (NAN) Mr Adewale Ajadi, Country Representative, Synergos Nigeria, said that its initiative, tagged ‘’State Partnership for Agriculture (SPA)’’ was a huge boost to the country’s agriculture sector.
Ajadi said this while addressing participants at a Consultative Forum and Core Delivery Team Capacity Building workshop on Monday in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Synergos is a global non-profit organisation that fights poverty, and helps to solve problems on health, nutrition, agriculture, education and employment.
The Country Representative said that the project was designed to assist farmers to solve problems relating to poverty, by converting cassava peels to animal feeds and other areas of agriculture.
”The Synergos project, called SPA, is to narrow the gap between the state and federal agenda and develop the linkages between them for the benefit of the rural farmers.
“SPA has developed the capacity of stakeholders involved and will step it down to the community farmers in three states: Kogi, Benue and Kaduna.
“We train our staff in management for them to use different mode to make farmers understand our mission and vision and what they stand to gain thereafter.
“ These means and others have really helped farmers not only to increase their production, but also give them stable income,’’ he said
According to Ajadi, the organisation has identified some difficulties facing agriculture in Nigeria and had designed solutions to them.
He mentioned some of the challenges to include, land clearing, post harvest loss, marketing, credit facility inadequate agricultural equipment among others.
“About two to three years ago, when Synergos came to Nigeria, our challenge was how do we get the Federal and state governments to the same room and speak about issues of agriculture.
‘’Our success so far now is encouraging and we promise to do more in accordance with the Federal Government Green Alternative Policy,’’ he said.
Mr Ashafa Dauda, General Manger, Kaduna State Agricultural Agency (KADA) said that the state as one of the state benefiting from Synergos project had really achieved from its SPA project in all aspects.
Dauda said capacity building, advisory services, certified inputs and agrochemicals, marketing and more, launched by Synergos, had really increased production and income of farmers in the state.
He, however, stressed the need for stronger partnership between the Federal Government and Synergos, through SPA, to eradicate poverty and find solutions to some of the challenges facing farmers in Nigeria.
Also, Mrs Lydia Oyewole, Fadama representative for Kogi, said that Synergos project had also assisted farmers in the state to record huge harvest.
Oyewole said Kogi was one of the states that started the SPA in 2015 with a focus to transforming cassava peel to animal feeds, due to the excess of cassava production in the state.
She said that this had served as source of income to numerous farmers in the state, increased production and ensure job creation to the youth and women.
Oyewole called on Federal Government to carry state governments a long in the agricultural in its policy, saying that the states were the institutions interacting directly with farmers with a view to increasing their productivity. (NAN)
APA/ROK/AOS/DUA
Edited by Bayo Sekoni/Dada Ahmed