In its determined efforts to tackle the effects of climatic changes to rice production, SASAKAWA have trained 550 community- based farmers/facilitators, and provided with new variety of rice seedling, which is resistant to climatic changes.
Among the criteria for the facilitators is that they must be resident within the community and must be a member of the groups, SASAKAWA works with.
“This year alone, we have 550 community-based facilitators and each of them handles 25 farmers in the demonstration farms. Each community-based facilitator is handling not less than 1,000 famers in the group. The ratio of extension workers to farmers is 1 to 1,000.”
The Project, Coordinator, Sasakawa Africa Association/Kano State Agro-development (KSADP) Abdulrashid identified and distributed a new rice variety, which is resistant to climatic changes, a major challenge to Nigerian rice farmers.
The project coordinator of SAS/KSADP, Abdulrashid Hamisu Kofar Mata, who made the disclosure at the end of five-day media field days tour of demonstration farms, stated that the group has identified and adopted a rice variety, which is resistant to climatic changes.
According to Kofar Mata, the tour, among others is to assess and evaluate the progress, so far made by the Smallholder famers, following SASAKAWA’s intervention, with training and provision of new rice seed variety that are resistant to climatic change.
Kofar Mata, who spoke at the closing ceremony of the Media Field days at a dinner, emphasized that, with the introduction of the new rice variety, farmers will no longer suffer losses, as they used to due to climatic change, which is a major challenge to rice farmers.
“It has been our tradition in SASAKAWA, when we go round the communities, where we intervene and have a direct interface with the beneficiaries to hear from their mouth. We networked, supported, as well as interfaced and trained over 270,000 farmers, which cuts across the different value chain, ranging from rice, Sorghum, maize, tomatoes, millet and cabbage.”
According to him, the beneficiaries of the training programme, were also supported, with series of agro-based equipment in Garum Malam and Kura Local Government area.
During Thursday’s media field day, one of the beneficiaries of the training, Saminu Rabiu Musa Kura, corroborated the Project Coordinator’s submissions, adding that they were also supplied with high yielding varieties of rice seedling
“I am expecting to harvest thrice higher than what I produced last year, following the training programme, which recommended the planting of more than one rice seedling, which must be spaced before planting, with specified fertilizer. I’m indeed appreciative of the good gesture of SASAKAWA, that supplied the high yielding rice seedling to us (demon farmers).”
“What we are doing is taking them from the scratch, providing farmers, with agro-processing equipment We have done a lot to improve in the value system.
“To be fair and transparent, that is why we invited the media to accompany us to confirm what they have seen, and to evaluate the success they recorded, following our intervention. We work across the 44 Local Government areas across the State. The farmers were not opportune to be exposed to modern agricultural practices. We have the modules that we take them through. We groom them and rigidly follow the modules for a period of three years. This is to enable them approach farming as a business.”
“The major challenges, as at last year is the early stoppage of rainfall and climatic change. To tackle the challenge, we have introduced a system for the farmers by identifying some seeds that can resist climatic change, which will enable the farmers to mitigate the challenge of climatic change.”
On sustainable plan, SASAKAWA have introduced community-based facilitators, who are also farmers and we train them and provide them with monthly stipends.
Among the criteria for the facilitators is that they must be resident within the community and must be a member of the groups, SASAKAWA works with.
“This year alone, we have 550 community-based facilitators and each of them handles 25 farmers in the demonstration farms. Each community-based facilitator is handling not less than 1,000 famers in the group. The ratio of extension workers to farmers is 1 to 1,000.
“The main objective of the project is to support farmers by proving them with the entire input they need and we already have a base line. We have set a target for the farmers to achieve twice of what they are currently achieving.
“By the improved method we have introduced, we expect the farmers to produce not less than five metric tons per hectare of farmland.”