By Tina George, Minna
Niger State Commissioner of Agriculture, Haliru Jikantoro has warned beneficiaries of the state FADAMA COVID-19 Action Recovery Economic Stimulus (N-CARES) not to sell their agricultural inputs to buy foodstuff and ram for the forthcoming Sallah.
He gave the warning at the flag-off of the 2021 agriculture inputs distribution to N-CARES beneficiaries at the FADAMA office in Minna on Sunday.
“A bag of rice, sorghum or maize paddy may be able to buy you a ram or rice or whatever you may need for the Sallah but it will be a mistake for you to sell it. This is because Sallah is just one day but if you go ahead to plant these seeds and use the other inputs, it would benefit you greatly by lifting you and your family from the current level you are in.”
The Commissioner who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Dr Idris Gbogan said that the goal of the N-CARES programme is to increase food security and safe functioning of food supply chains.
“The Project development objective is to protect livelihoods and food security of poor and vulnerable families and facilitate recovery of local economic activity in all participating states across Nigeria.
“The agricultural livelihoods and food security support under the N-CARES will include investments and policy measures to mitigate impacts on agricultural livelihoods, enhance their resilience to economic shocks, and facilitate faster recovery to lay the foundations for agriculture value chains to generate more and better jobs.”
He noted that 125 farmers have been selected to benefit from the flag-off event with five farmers from each of the 25 local governments areas of the state under rice, maize and sorghum value chains.
The state N-CARES Coordinator, Dr Hassan Kontagora said that each beneficiary will be supported with four 50kg bags of NPK fertilizers, two 50kg bags of urea fertilizer, four litters of herbicide, a litter of pesticide and 25 to 50kg of rice, maize and sorghum seeds depending on the farmer’s enterprise.
“In short, we are distributing 37.5 metric tonnes of NPK and Urea fertilizers, 3.8 metric tonnes of rice, maize and sorghum seed, and 500 and 125 litters of herbicide and insecticide.”
He explained that the N-CARES project is aimed to protect livelihoods and food security of poor and vulnerable families and facilitate recovery of local economic activity in the state.
He appealed to the Beneficiaries to effectively utilize the inputs they have been provided with adding that the beneficiaries will be adequately monitored at the community and state level.
