Flood: Farmers, others brainstorm on how to forestall future losses

Some farmers and other stakeholders have met and brainstormed on how to forestall future losses of harvests as a result of flood disasters, especially in Kebbi State.

Farmers in the state suffered huge losses this year due to ravaging floods, which submerged many farms and destroyed crops.

The 2-day meeting was organised by OXFAM under the Proact project, a support base for agriculture in the northern part of Nigeria in collaboration with the European Union Support for Food Security and Resilience.

The representative of  Proact in the country, Faleye Usman explained that the meeting was not only to mark the World Food Day but also to discuss a way out of the imminent food scarcity due to the flood that ravaged most of the farmlands in the state.

“We decided to celebrate the World Food Day in a different way, by bringing stakeholders together to brainstorm on major issues affecting farmers in the state with a view to proffering solutions to them,” he said

Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary in the Kebbi State Ministry of Agriculture,  Mr Joel Aiki, said the state has acquired about 4,000 tonnes of millet seeds to support dry season farmers, while another 5,000 tonnes of other seedlings were being expected from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Mr Aiki advised farmers in the state to embrace insurance in order to cushion the effects of flooding and other natural disasters that could affect their farms.

He said despite the losses incurred by their farmers, the state would maintain its leadership position in food production in the country.

A female  farmer, Libabatu Bunza, who has over 20 hectares of rice farmland in Ci da kai village in Dandi Local Government Council, told Caliphate Trust,  that she lost over 16 hectares of her farmland to the flood.

According to her, had the rice reached harvesting period, she was hoping to get 40 bags of rice per hectare adding that for the 16 hectares destroyed she was expecting to get about 700 bags of paddy rice.

Another rice farmer, Suleiman Bashir, who also lost most of the farm produce to the flood, appealed to the state and the federal government to come to their aid.