Farmers Brown Field Day in Gagarawa

The demonstration was on millet which is the staple food of many people in the Sahel region of West Africa, on how best the farmers can grow millet in their farms and sustain the harvest despite the challenges of population growth. It was also aimed at providing a common market for agro inputs in West […]

The demonstration was on millet which is the staple food of many people in the Sahel region of West Africa, on how best the farmers can grow millet in their farms and sustain the harvest despite the challenges of population growth. It was also aimed at providing a common market for agro inputs in West Africa and the removal of bottlenecks in the provision and marketing of inputs which are crop protection products and also the use of acceptable fertilizers by the farmers.

The demonstration, according to the Marketing Inputs Regionally (MIR) project specialist, Yahaya Kura, is also to explain the integrated soil fertility management, and the use of herbicide to the farmers so there were plot where three styles of farming were demonstrated which include the use of advanced farming techniques in one plot and the use of the conventional method in the other.

Kadaita village was chosen for the demonstration because there is a steady population growth around the Gumel Emirate in Jigawa which encompasses local governments like Gagarawa, Maigatari and Sule Tankarkar. These were places threatened by desertification, farmers are having difficulty having bigger yields.

While giving the details of the practical experiment, Muhammad Gumel of Green Sahel,  a farmers cluster NGO, said the demonstration has vividly shown farmers how their yield can be when they apply fertilizer or when they use organic manure, hence giving them a practical result to adopt.

Muhammad said the farmers were shown many options. For instance, they neglected one ridge on the farm and the demonstration has  shown to them they should not skip the ridge, it also proved to them that the use of improved variety of seeds would make the yield more plenty and resourceful.

He said at the local level, they have organised groups in each village and 25 members were drawn from 36 villages in the local government, others, he said, were volunteers and hopefully, a five year programme would cover thousands.

He also revealed that the Jigawa Agric and Rural Development Authority has shown interest in the project and may come in at a later time.

The ‘Brown Field Day’ was coined from the nature of the crop at harvest, the brown colour signifying the ripeness of the crop which is the millet according to Yahaya Kura.

For the farmer, Habu Usman of Kadaita village, it was a memorable day as his farm was chosen for the demo and he explained that he was skeptical at first when the extension workers approached him. He said the new weeding process introduced to him has shown him however that he needs not over weed his millet, saying most of the techniques were inherited and not tested.

He said education and enlightenment on new farm techniques is what they lack and if such efforts would be made, they would be willing to adapt to techniques that would improve their yields.

“It is obvious that my crops are bringing a better yield than I expected and they have shown me the use of organic manure like I have never thought of,” said the smiling Usman.

The coordinator of Thousand Plus, another partner in the project, Iliya Duniya, which are the local partners, said the many farmer groups they have been working with were only formed for securing fertilizer from the government, they did not meet for other issues pertaining to their improvement.

He said the project which is ECOWAS funded with the services of other groups, is making effort to sensitize the farmers on the need to have stronger unions to find ways for them to be utilizing agricultural inputs not just fertilizer but also chemicals that will improve their harvest.