By Juliana Agbo
Kogi State coordination office of Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Support (APPEALS) Project has embarked upon the conduct of a feasibility study on market information for Rice, Cashew and Cassava value chains across the 21 local government areas of the state.
The APPEALS state project coordinator, Dr Sanni Abdullahi Ozomata said it will enable farmers in the state gain access to profitable markets to sell their farm produce and have improved incomes.
Ozomata said data gotten from the feasibility study will enable APPEALS project come up with strategies to bridge the gap in demand, organise the market situations, create a market information kiosk for farmers and enable them to gain access to improved technology.
He assured actors along the three value chains of APPEALS project readiness in providing quality market information and linking them to financial institutions and business services that would boost their productivity.
The Kogi state APPEALS project also embarked on survey to enable farmers to achieve increased production output, efficient and competitive processing and value addition activities, ability to access profitable markets and reduce post-harvest losses.
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To this end, the Kogi State Coordination office of APPEALS project is conducting a reconnaissance survey on farm and processing clusters to obtain data on potential infrastructural needs for ease of prioritization and in alignment with the project development objectives of APPEALS project.
Dr Ozomata told farmers and other stakeholders that the reconnaissance survey will enable the project to identify and prioritize infrastructural needs of farmers and processors in their cluster settings to strengthen their capacities and improve the physical environment.
He assured them that effort is being made to tackle the immediate needs of farmers in the state to enable them to meet up with this years’ farming season.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the APPEALS project commitment of enhancing the productivity of small and medium scale farmers and improving value addition along priority value chains, the state coordination office project has also began the Mapping of Commodity Interest Groups (CIGs) along its priority value chains of Rice, Cashew and Cassava across the local governments in the state.
This process which involves demarcation and pegging of individual farmland along side the taking of geo coordinates, will ensure the judicious allocation of resources to the right farmers along the value chains.
Ozomata while supervising the exercise also sensitised farmers on the need to structure and organise themselves into groups with genuine farmlands in order to benefit from the project.
He also encouraged the farmers to approach farming as a business as this will lead to sustainability.
Subsequently, the Kogi APPEALS project commenced the second phase of the Mapping exercise to fast track the implementation of the APPEALS project in the state.
Dr Ozomata, said with support from the national office of APPEALS project, strategies have been developed and being implemented to speed up the empowerment process for genuine farmers in the state to meet up with this year’s cropping season. This is in a bid to help mitigate the food crisis that may arise after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The farmers were also sensitized on the impact of the COVID -19 Pandemic and the necessary precautionary measures as contained in the guidelines of the Kogi state and Federal Government of Nigeria.
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