Sasakawa moves to address post-harvest challenges in Katsina

Speaking with Daily Trust in Katsina, Gambo said this is aimed at improving post-harvest handling, storage and processing of agricultural produce to reduce losses in order to increase incomes and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and agro-processors. He said apart from the crop productivity enhancement and livestock development of the project, Sasakawa project in […]

Speaking with Daily Trust in Katsina, Gambo said this is aimed at improving post-harvest handling, storage and processing of agricultural produce to reduce losses in order to increase incomes and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and agro-processors.
He said apart from the crop productivity enhancement and livestock development of the project, Sasakawa project in Katsina State has already conducted a market research aimed at establishing public-private partnerships in support of extension delivery and smallholder agricultural development through more profitable access to markets in the state.
“The state’s needs were identified and prioritised and several intervention packages were designed to address them. We shall  continue to monitor progress to provide timely feedback data, analysis and evidence for SAA, researchers, input suppliers, policy makers, partners, donors and investors to help consolidate and develop pluralistic agricultural value-chain extension in line with the Agricultural Extension Transformation (AETA) under the presidential initiative of Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA),” he said.
He said in each of the states where the project worked, “there was a particular value chain project, be it crop or livestock. Like in Katsina we worked on sorghum and maize, we intend to start livestock very soon; let’s say in a month’s time we hope to take up.  
‘In Livestock, we have the lower ruminants and the higher ruminants. Here we are talking of goats, sheep, cattle and some others that can be domesticated. We are exploring so many intervention packages that are available and we started with the crops because of their nature. Sasakawa plans to work fully on livestock by next month as already modalities have been put in place, studies conducted,” he said.
We have  even done selections on where to intervene in the livestock issues to the extent that even the partners have been chosen. We have done our pre-taking up analysis and evaluation of intervention. These, among others, are part of the integral programme. For crops we have gone far, but I assure you the livestock sector too shall receive our intervention soonest,” he added.
Daily Trust reports that the programme is part of the ongoing Sasakawa/federal government partnership operating in six states among which is Katsina.