Farmers Commend NIRSAL’s Support

Farmers in Kupto, Funakaye, and Yamaltu Deba Local Government Areas (LGA) of Gombe State, who have been empowered to cultivate rice and maize during this dry season under the Cemtral Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) have commended the various supports they have received through the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, (NIRSAL Plc) for the 2018/2019 dry season farming ABP initiative. NIRSAL recently flagged-off the distribution of agricultural inputs to 1,729 rice and maize farmers in Gombe State under the CBN ABP dry aeason farming. At the flag-off ceremony recently, Mr. Rabiu Haruna, the farmers’ representative of HABUCOM Farmers Group, one opf the beneficiaries of the ABP input distribution, confirmed that the 1,195 farmers in the cooperative have received 2,170 petrol Water Pumps which will help them irrigate their farms and mitigate the impact of the dry season experienced in the region during this period. “We farm maize on 2,170 hectares of land and with NIRSAL’s assistance, we now have 2,170 water pumps, which means that we have one water pump for each hectare. Before now, we did not have enough water pumps to irrigate our farms, we used to hire water pumps and many times the water pumps broke down because we overworked them”, Haruna said. Other inputs distributed to the rice and maize farmers of HABUCOM and Rice Resources Cooperative include 123 tonnes of Seed, 6,152 Litres of Crop Protection Chemicals, 769 tonnes of Fertilizer and 3,076 units of knapsack Sprayers. Speaking on behalf of the Rice Resources Cooperative was the Group’s President, Alhaji Ahmed Shehu, who said that “with the certified improved seeds given to farmers by NIRSAL, we are expecting a bumper harvest of about 120 bags of rice from every two hectares cultivated.” Shehu said that their dreams will soon become a reality with the newly received water pumps which they will use for farm irrigation, enabling them to cultivate rice during the Dry and Wet Seasons of 2019. Alhaji Shehu called for additional government support to enable the group to continue the expansion of their farm operations. According to him, members of the group had acquired new methods for dry season rice production from NIRSAL’s Project Monitoring Reporting and Remediation Officers (PMRO) but would need further government assistance to expand their cooperative into larger clusters. He further expressed gratitude to NIRSAL, CBN and the Federal Government for improving the capacity of the group. NIRSAL is currently completing ABP input distribution in four states of the North-East which are Gombe, Borno, Taraba, and Adamawa.

Source: Leadership