The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), says about 156, 000 farmers in Niger State have been reached with different levels of intervention.
The institution said it used models like demonstration plots in different Local Government Areas which started with six and expanded in phases to 19 LGAs with step–down training and field days.
Associate Program Officer of AGRA, Mr. Godswill Aguiyi, who stated this in an interview with journalists said, the institution is implementing the consortium project which has to do with the activities in the agricultural value chain.
Aguiyi said AGRA has various partners working on the different aspects of the agricultural value chain.
He added that AGRA focused on the rice value chain on the project it started in 2017 and concluded this year.
He added that they had partners who focused on creating access to seeds, extension aspects, and partners who focused on giving the farmers access to fertilisers.
He said: “These were the basic components, although we also had non-funded partners as part of the consortium such as Niger State Agriculture and Mechanization Development Authority (NAMDA) and the Rice Farmers Association.
“The partners who were most efficient were the seed companies, agro-dealers and extension agents”.
Speaking further, he said the initiative was aimed at getting farmers to understand good agronomic practices and field technologies such as line spacing, the use of improved seeds, effective fertilizer application and best practices in the post-harvest area such as threshing and harvesting.
“We targeted 156,000 farmers in the state and were able to reach them all, with different levels of intervention.
The extension agents supported the training of the farmers by training the Community Based Advisors (CBAs) who then educated the farmers in the various groups and LGAs they belonged to.
“One important component of this project that I would say was very significant was the CBA model as it reduced the extension agent – farmer ratio.
“In Niger state, there’s a gap between the farmers and extension agents, you could have one extension agent being expected to reach three thousand farmers but with this model, each CBA only had to reach 300 or 400 farmers to teach them good agronomic practices and give them adequate access to farm inputs and extension advisory services.
On impact made on activities of farmers so far, he said the productivity of the farmers AGRA worked with improved from the baseline of 2.5metric tons of rice to four metric tons and above in all the locations it worked.
On collaboration, he said there were several collaborations with the state government and businesses.
“One typical example is that one of the milestones that we were meant to achieve was to ensure that there was adequate access to inputs for the farmers in the state, so in terms of access to finance, I can tell you that the Agro-dealers we supported had access to microcredit through SEAP Microfinance Institution which is one of the microfinance institutions that operates in Niger state.
“I’m aware that SEAP has disbursed over N70 million and counting. They are allowed to repay the loans & receive more credit as many times as they need to. Farmers also get microcredit from institutions like Lift Above Poverty Organisation (LAPO) and Bayetin Microfinance which operates in BIDA”, he said.