The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is set to release a total sum of $1.7 million US dollars to support farmers under its rice and cassava value chain development project to mitigate the effect of floods and other crises.
Speaking at the stakeholders’ wrap-up workshop of the joint federal government and IFAD Mission Midterm Review (MTR) of the Value Chain Development Project (VCDP) Friday in Abuja, the IFAD Country Director, Ms Dede Ekoue, said the fund has become necessary to help farmers deal with the effects of multiple shocks they experienced this year.
She said the total response of flood recovery for 2022 is 1. 7 million dollars.
“The first reallocation was 600 000 dollars and a new approval was done from 1.1 million dollars. The flood recovery response in support of VCDP bénéficiairies has started already with distribution to Vcdp beneficiaries for dry season farming in Kogi, Nassarawa, Niger Anambra, and Enugu.
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“The process will be accelerated during the last month and early next year.
“Technical preparation is underway to ensure the effective disbursement of the 5 million dollar grant in 2023-2024 to support VCDP farmers in their recovery from and resilience to floods and climate shocks,” she said.
The country director said smallholder farmers were severely affected by the massive flood, Russian-Ukraine war, climate change crisis, and the economic crisis hinged on currency exchange issues.
Ms Ekoue said the program is for smallholder farmers, adding that “they appreciate the fact that the program is helping them improve their productivity. They also appreciate the fact that the program is linking them to off-takers and this allowed them to have a ready market to sell their produce.”
Also speaking, the national programme coordinator of the value chain project, Dr Fatima Aliyu, said the money will support more than 2000 farmers across the nine participating states.
She said each farmer under one hectare will receive 4 bags of NPK fertilizer, 2 bags of Urea fertilizer, herbicide, and other supports.
Dr Aliyu stated that farmers will soon start to receive support before the end of this December to enable farmers to go back to the field as soon as possible.
