No fewer than 6000 groups of farmers across Kano State have benefitted from enhanced farming techniques, seeds, water pumping machines as well as processing machines from the Kano State government to enhance the agricultural sector and to fight the shortage of agricultural products and food inflation.
This was made known to LEADERSHIP by the Lead Extension Agent, Ibrahim Adamu of the Kano State Agro-Pastoral Development Project (KSADP) at Kabo local government area of Kano.
“The purpose of this project is to enhance the lives of the farmers and other beneficiaries in the agric sector, to build their skills and expose them to new and enhanced farming techniques.
“Those who do the farming directly are supported with new techniques, seeds, water pumping machines and fertilizer. Those who process the products are supported with milling machines, marketers are supported with marketing techniques and so on.
“We have eased their hardship such that the pumping machines they are given are solar powered, instead of those using fuel.
“We support all forms of farmers that include those farming rice, vegetables, corn, millet, onion, tomatoes and others, as you can see around.
“We support them both in the wet season as well as the dry season. We teach them new techniques of mulching to enhance the farms and others,” he stated.
He further explained that the farmers are also taught how to double the quantity of their products using the same lands by teaching the new plant spacing methods.
“We have put smiles on the faces of the farmers who are now producing three to four tons of corn per hectare as against the one ton per hectare they used to produce”, he added.
Speaking to newsmen, some of the beneficiaries expressed gratitude for the government’s support while calling on the government to do more to increase production and fight the current hardship.
A female beneficiary Zainabu Nuhu, whose group was given a multipurpose rice milling machine, asked the government to also provide them with a grinding machine.
“This multi-purpose rice miller was provide to us by the government and it has eased our work and expanded our profitability.
“We used to process only two bags of rice a day before now, but with this machine we have the capacity to process 10 bags of rice a day,” she stated.
Another beneficiary, Abdullahi Usman, said he was provided with enhanced rice seeds, fertilizer and pesticides along with the new farming techniques.
“In the past, I used to produce about ten bags of rice on my two hectares of farmland. But with this support this year I have made up to thirty bags, despite the damage done to me by herders,” he stated.
