Paradise News

Tag: Project Grow

  • If we politicize food production, we can’t politicize hunger – Agric expert

    If we politicize food production, we can’t politicize hunger – Agric expert

    By Christian Njoku

    Mr Dennis Ikpali, Project Director of Cross River’s Project Grow initiative on Tuesday asserted that if they politicize food production as a state, they would not be able to politicize hunger when it comes with all its attendant problems.

    Ikpali disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Calabar while reacting to Cross River’s ongoing initiative in partnership with AFOS Foundation to train 5,000 farmers in the state every quarter for the next four years on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP).

    NAN reports that Project Grow is a Public Private Partnership (PPP) project facilitated by Cross River to empower 100,000 agribusinesses of up to 40 per cent youths and women in the 18 Local Government Areas of the state.

    The project director said the whole idea of the project was to increase and commercialize food production, adding that, the state’s population was growing and subsistence farming could no longer solve the challenge of hunger.

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    “To deliver our vision we started 54 training centres across the 18 LGAs to train farmers on GAP, financial literacy record keeping as well as cooperative management; this is to enable them synergize and aggregate their efforts to achieve more.

    “The training is for 3 weeks, each batch of farmers trained for four days and certified at the end of the training and the next batch begins; our overall target for this quarter is to train 5,000 Farmers and link them to the banks for funding opportunities.

    “We need to produce commercially through viable value chains that will create liquidity which will enable us overcome hunger,  build food resilience and grow our economy,” he said.

    On his part, Mr Olatunji Moses, Project Coordinator for the Small Holder Farmers Programme from AFOS Foundation, said the training focuses on small holder farmers in the maize and cassava value chain.

    Moses who was impressed with the enthusiasm and response of the Farmers noted that the training was to equip them with the skills to enhance productivity and yield, especially income generation and profitability.

    NAN visited four of the training centres in Calabar Municipality and Calabar South LGAs and spoke to Mrs Marian Kusi, one of the beneficiaries of the training and she said, although, she had been a farmer for years but had been making many mistakes.

    According to Kusi, “I grow cassava, maize, water leaf and pumpkin but with what I have learnt in this program it is clear that I have been making mistakes in the past in fertilizer usage but with the training I will do exploits in my farm.

    “I hope this training will also get to many of the farmers deep in the hinterlands where they lack access to proper information that can help them increase yield and come together as a cooperative to access aid,” she narrated.

    (NAN)

  • Project Grow will concentrate wealth in the hands of farmers rather than middlemen, C’River Gov

    Project Grow will concentrate wealth in the hands of farmers rather than middlemen, C’River Gov

    By Kelvin Obambon

    Determined to ensure that farmers in Cross River reap maximum returns on their efforts and labour in the production of agricultural goods, the state governor, Prince Bassey Otu has came up with plans to help farmers increase their revenue over middlemen who buy-off their produce and sell at a higher price without going through the toils involved in farming.

    The plans unfolded Wednesday at the flagging-off of the cultivation of 2,000 hectares of commercial maize farming in Odukpani Local Government Area, under the Project Grow Initiative of the state government.

    Speaking during the ceremony, governor Otu said the initiative was designed to curb food insecurity and create a sustainable economy in the state by having farmers cultivate and companies like Flour Mills off-take it.

    He said the Project was a testament to what resilience could achieve, noting that the occasion was symbolic to celebrate the commencement of mechanical planting of maize over a commercial area of 2,000 hectares.

    READ ALSO: Project Grow will put Cross River farmers on the map of prosperity – Commissioner for Agriculture

    The governor who was represented by Mrs Glory Effiong, the state accountant general, said “It is expected that after 6 years, this project would allow the market players in each of the value chain to understand themselves and engage independently while bringing our people into the money system to tackle multidimensional poverty.

    “It is my dream that every resident of Cross River will live above poverty line because the Nigerian economy has shown a wide gap between the rich and the poor but this initiative aims to bridge it.”

    Also speaking, the Director of Project Grow, Mr Dennis Ikpali said in the past, farmers in the state planted maize at subsistence level but Project Grow was helping them commercialize the whole process by cultivating 2,000 hectares of land.

    Ikpali said the maize acquired by Project Grow was early maturing, high yielding, disease and drought resistant and had the capacity of producing four tons of maize per hectare.

    “This means that within four months of planting, the 2,000 hectares of land has the capacity to generate 8,000 tons of maize and by market computation where a ton of maize is N600,000, we are looking at 10 to 12 billion naira income flowing through the system,” he said.

    One of the beneficiaries, Mrs Mary Ayi who was given a hectare said she used to plant cassava but was ready to go into commercial cultivation of maize because of its shorter duration, adding that she would plough back whatever she got to enlarge her farm.

    Another indigene of Odukpani, Nsa Okon, said he was quite satisfied with the implementation process of Project Grow while calling on those yet to receive their portions to be patient as the implementation was in phases.

    Project Grow is a market driven initiative aimed at stimulating private sector investment in key agricultural value chains such as maize, rice, cassava, aquaculture and animal fodder. For effective cultivation of the land under the initiative, each farmer would receive N1 million loan from partner commercial banks and upon harvesting, the maize would be off-taken by Flour Mills Nigeria, another key partner of the project.