An agribusiness firm, Agrolog Ltd, has distributed 3,217 bags of ginger rhizomes to farmers in Kachia Local Government Area of Kaduna State under a partnership with the Bank of Agriculture (BOA).
Grace Ndibamaiyi, Executive Assistant at Agrolog Ltd, disclosed this in an interview with reporters on the sidelines of the Kaduna State Ministry of Agriculture sector coordination meeting on Friday in Kaduna.
Ndibamaiyi said BOA funded the procurement of the ginger seeds, while Agrolog coordinated the profiling of beneficiaries, as well as the procurement and distribution of the rhizomes.
She said the company was also providing extension services and monitoring farmers to ensure the success of the pilot project.
“We are currently monitoring and providing extension services. We coordinated the purchase and distribution and also the profiling of the farmers,” she said.
Ndibamaiyi said Agrolog had also provided farmers with its algae concentrate solution, an organic fertiliser, free of charge to improve soil health and support ginger production.
According to her, the solution was tested on demonstration plots before being introduced to farmers under the project.
“We tried it on demo plots on ginger, and we saw that those diseased ginger, with good agricultural practices and this algae concentrate solution, came out very clean,” she said.
She, however, stressed that the solution needed to be applied alongside good agricultural practices and at the recommended frequency.
Ndibamaiyi said initial reports from the beneficiary farmers had been encouraging.
She said Agrolog hoped that successful implementation of the pilot project would encourage BOA to scale up the intervention to other ginger-producing areas.
Agrolog, she said, was focused on the entire ginger value chain, including production, aggregation and off-taking.
