‘Fadama III Additional Financing project will boost food production in FCT’

Why has your office remained quiet despite the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari being keen on boosting agriculture?  Well, it has not been quiet as such, as the past two to three years have been a transition, so to say. You are aware that the federal government has decided to upscale Fadama III project […]

Why has your office remained quiet despite the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari being keen on boosting agriculture? 

Well, it has not been quiet as such, as the past two to three years have been a transition, so to say. You are aware that the federal government has decided to upscale Fadama III project to Additional Financing (AF), and this is mainly with the aim of aligning it more closely with the Agricultural Transformation Agenda and four value chains were selected: Cassava, rice, sorghum and tomato. And this was to ramp up the production of these commodities, which we are spending substantial amount of money importing from other countries, thereby keeping our people out of employment and keeping other people in employment in their own countries. 

As you are aware with the last 2015 general elections, there was a change of guard, especially at the federal level and the current government decided to implement Treasury Single Account (TSA), thereby, pooling all government funds to the Central Bank, which I will say essentially, was the major hitch that slowed the take-off  the Additional Financing (AF)platform. 

As I am speaking with you, about 27 groups across the FCT have prepared what we call business plans which have been cleared and approved for funding by the national coordination office. We are also pursuing other things that we will add to this so that more groups will also benefit. 

We are hoping that with the first circle of the irrigation rice farming that we are envisaging, we are going to show the whole country that FCT against all assumptions, has comparative advantage in rice production in commercial quantities.

Can you explain further what Fadama III Additional Financing (AF) means to farmers in FCT?  

Briefly, the Fadama III Additional Financing is all about developing the four identified crops along the value chains – cassava, rice, sorghum and tomato. You are aware that we spend a lot of money importing rice into this country. Roughly, about a billion naira is spent daily to bring rice into this country. You can imagine what a billion naira daily in a year could do to our economy. So this project is aiming at one, ramping up production of these commodities, because what is happening in the rice sector is equally happening in the tomato, cassava and sorghum sectors. 

Besides, cassava is also a crop that has various utilities in industrial and food security purpose, so also sorghum. Sorghum is used for industrial as well as food security purpose. And if we are able to meet the demands for these crops in this country with local production and with the support we are getting from the AF project, I tell you that the country is going to conserve the lean foreign currency that is not readily available.  

So we have to look inward to actually produce what we will eat since we have the capacity and advantage. 

The Additional Financing (AF) is a kind of stimulus fund for farmers to look at farming as a business.  We will try to train the rural farmers and let them adopt best practices in business management in agronomic technologies for production of all the various crops under the value chain. They will also try to be able to prepare bankable plans that even after withdrawal of the project support, the rural farmers could on their own have a kind of record they keep and the kind of plans they can develop and approach commercial and formal sources of credit in order to get funding for continuation. 

So that is one of the sustainability measures we are trying to introduce to be able to empower the groups. And we are also teaching them best practices in production so that the complain for example stones or pebbles in our local rice,  will be eliminated completely right from the field. 

We are also collaborating with the Japanese International Agency (JAICA), to teach local millers how to adopt cost effective and efficient method through the use of what we call first-bottom technology. 

This is something that will ensure that stones don’t get into the rice during milling process. Arrangements are on to acquire these milling machines for the group of the rice farmers.

Who are these target groups that would benefit from the project and how were you able to bring them together?          

You see, Fadama is open to all communities and people who are willing to farm and who are willing to come into groups and select a particular crop they want to concentrate on. However, we give special attention and preference to youth and women. And this is deliberate, as you will observe that across the country, the farming population is ageing and there is need for a replacement of the ageing population. If we don’t have a replacement, it means, we are going to have a dead agriculture one day because when they die or they get old, they can’t produce crops anymore, agriculture will become a cul-de-sac. 

We are focusing particularly on youth and women. And traditionally you may be aware that women play very significant roles in agricultural production under the value-chain,  particularly in the post-harvest phase.  

Besides, there are conditions in the course of disbursement of the Additional Financing (AF) which one has to meet to be a member of a group and must be willing to participate in the project, that is by preparing a plan with the guidance of our facilitators, as they must also register, and they must have an operational bank account and they must also have the capacity and willingness to pay their beneficiary contribution.