Synergos helps farmers to fix challenges, boost production – Official
NAN-AE-2
Challenges
By Kudirat Musa
Abuja, Sept. 19, 2017 (NAN) The Synergos Nigeria, a global non-profit organisation, said that it has been helping farmers to fix agricultural challenges by the themselves and maintain their standard of living after its programme end.
Mr Adewale Ajadi, Synergos Nigeria Country Director, made this known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Tuesday.
Ajadi said that the Synergos through its project tag: State Partnership for Agriculture (SPA), did not fix challenges for farmers, but helped them to learn how to solve and build their capacity with solution centre.
Synergos has presence in Kogi, Benue and Kaduna states, with the special intervention on rice, ginger, yam and cassava production in the country.
According to Ajayi, one of the major challenges facing farmers in the country is unavailability of markets for their farm produce to reduce post-harvest loss.
“Synergos is working with the state governments to ensure that there is destination for agricultural produce and this will encourage investors to come and invest in agriculture.
“ We normally connect farmers with off-takers to take off what they produced and we have more than 1,000 of such cassava farmers in Kogi.
“ We are setting up conditioning centre for ginger in Kaduna state to ensure international standard and set up the capacity to process it.
“ We are helping them to identify international standard for their export, the volume they can produce because there is already made market waiting for their produce and when they produce, it goes there’’ he said.
Ajadi added that the project has set up pioneering factories for cassava peels as livestock feeds in Kogi and Benue and these are the first of its kind in the country.
The Country Representative said that they are working on another innovation in ginger farming in Kaduna to make agriculture viable in the country.
Ajadi further explained how to process the livestock feed and boost the economy of the country.
“ You grind the peels three times to get the fine product, which is for poultry and fishing feeding, you get the rough one by grinding two times and is will serve as cow, sheep and goat feed.
“Once you grind, you will drain the water, which is the starch and can be used as building materials for moulding blocks.
“The farmer sell based on the economy production on the average rate between N20-50 per kilogramme (kg) but the expert says that the price of a bag should sell at the rate of price of halve bag of maize.
“ For now, a bag of 50kg is about N2,500 and the demand is even increasing, so we are thinking on how to step up production to meet the market demand,’’ he said.
According to him, all these serve as the source of income for farmers and also increase the cassava production in the state. (NAN)
ROK/AFA
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Edited by Felix Ajide