The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System’s (NIRSAL Plc) has launched farm inputs distribution in the North central states and the FCT even as farmers are to leverage its Agro Geo-Cooperative model.
Accruing to NIRSAL, the 2020 wet season farming activities under the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) will focus on rice, maize, cassava, sesame and soybean farmers.
Launching the programme in Dobi area of the FCT, the Head of NIRSAL’s Project Monitoring, Reporting and Remediation Office (PMRO) in the FCT, Mr. Ayo Olaleye, said NIRSAL would continue to prioritise farmers’ needs, not just in the implementation of the CBN’s ABP, but also in the development and delivery of frameworks that will further open the banking sector to agriculture.
He said, NIRSAL would also continue to ensure that farmers get the best of inputs at the right times and locations for their production purposes.
The NIRSAL Agro Geo-Cooperative formation process is structuring farmers by creating 16,000 Agro Geo-Cooperatives made up of eight million farmers cultivating four million hectares of farmland. To date, over 452 Agro Geo-Cooperatives covering over 270,000 hectares of land have benefitted from the process through the ABP.
Olaleye added that NIRSAL has structured farmers in the FCT into 16 established Agro Geo-Cooperatives, 12 of which are included in the ABP for wet season 2020.
Similarly, it has linked the 926 FCT farmers cultivating 1,140 hectares of land with guaranteed off-take markets, thereby protecting them from price fluctuations and the exploitative tendencies of some middlemen.
Speaking on behalf of his members, the President of the Dobi AGC, Rev. Emmanuel Afolabi, thanked the federal government and NIRSAL for their inclusion in the ABP, promising that they would ensure its successful implementation.
He solicited the sustenance and expansion of the programme to include more farmers in Dobi community in the future.
“We are grateful to the federal government for remembering us and bringing this project to us, rural dwellers. On our part, we will strive to ensure that the project is a success in our community. We pledge that we will not fail the government and NIRSAL. We are requesting that the programme does not end this year, and we want more farmers to be accommodated next year” Afolabi said.
