MAIZE production in Nigeria has suffered setback over the years following lack of access inputs, finance and inability of farmers to adopt best farming practice which is capable of boosting production.
Extension services which targets farmers in rural areas and very critical to improved agricultural productivity has been abandoned over the years, leaving the rural farmers with no form of training on good agricultural practices.
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The OCP Africa Campus Agribooster Offer is targeted at training agriculture students in universities on Extension Services, equip them with necessary materials and inputs and deployed to farms in rural areas to educate and assist farmers on best agricultural practices.
This year, OCP Africa engaged 15 agriculture Post Graduate students of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The school trained the students, while OCP Africa equipped them with Extension materials to reach 5000 farmers in the university environ.
OCP which is one of the biggest producers of phosphate fertilizer in the world is a Moroccan based company which has been in Nigeria for the past 3 years.
The Country Manager of OCP Africa, Mr Caleb Usoh during the launch of the Campus Agribooster Offer at ABU Zaria, said “within this three years, we have come up with a lot of programs and projects that we think will address the need of farmers. The idea for us is how to boost the productivity of farmers and get them to use more fertilizers and increase food production.
“So we started with this idea of agribooster. We were able to reach 5000 farmers in the first agribooster project in 2017. The idea of agribooster is to bring different partners together”.
He said in the first phase of the agribooster roll out, the company had partnerships across finance institutions, market off-takers of the produce, training partners, providers of input.
Mr Usoh said the project which was a success have been able to expand over the years to many other value chains which include sorghum, soyabeans and even rice, and have been extended beyond Kaduna state Katsina, Kebbi, Niger states.
He added that in Kaduna alone, in the last 2 years, they have deepened the project in many locations and have been able to reach 45,000 Rural with quality farm inputs, training and access to finance.
“We have also seen that over the years, many of these farmers have improved their farming practice and they actually have been able to cultivate much more, we have seen significant increase in yield parameter to about 40 to 60 per cent”, he noted.
During the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between OCP Africa and ABU Zaria, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Ibrahim Garba said the school would play its own role in assisting OCP Africa in achieving the target.
He urged the company to always approach the school whenever they are in need of partnership that would drive development in the agricultural sector.
“The university and the immediate region is a very well known agrarian environment, much of what we do in our small ways under our Micro Finance Bank and our Institute for Agriculture Research, we are doing it in our small ways, so what you brought in is to help us boost it and have mutual benefit”, Professor Garba said.
The Dean Faculty of Agriculture, ABU Zaria, Professor Olufunmilola Alabi said it is expected that the intervention would increase Maize yield drastically and farmers make more money.
“The students are going to be Agri-promoters in the different villages where these 5000 framers that OCP is working with are, the students are going to create awareness in the proper use of inputs that will help the farmers get higher yield in their crops and that we believe will help the farmers a lot because we are hoping that farmers that are getting 10 bags from an area before, with the intervention, they will be able to get up to 20 bags or even more”, she said.
Mr Usoh further explained that the project will provide seeds, fertilizer to the farmers, funds from the ABU Micro Finance bank and training for the extension workers which will be transferred to the farmers.
“We are providing best inputs, seeds, fertilizers and agro-chemicals and the training putting by the schools into the project, so we are very positive that this will expand yields of the farmers significantly based on the quality of the seeds and fertilizers we brought in.
“This provides access to finance to the farmers, quality inputs and access to market, and also training and extension services, and we thought also we should replicate this in Institutions in Nigeria”
Furthermore, he said “in Nigeria we are building capacity for production, so we are probably building blending plants, two ongoing at the same time in Ogun and Kaduna state, and we are also working on industrial facilities from the partnership with Nigeria Sovereign Wealth for urea production, all of these is to boost capacity of production, and also we are influencing agriculture in a landscape by going into projects like agribooster, One-Stop-Shop to enhance distribution into rural communities, and we are also working on soil mapping.
“So, we came up some of these projects working in collaboration with organizations to influence the growth of agriculture activities, we started agribooster in 2017, and it was also in Kaduna as a pilot with some private companies as partners, we had Bayer, we had AFEX as off-takers, we had Lapo Micro Finance Bank which did the financing”.
One of the the trainees, Elijah Ogunshola said with the training thy had undergone both in the classroom and from OCP Africa, in 6 months, the yield of farmers under their watch would increase.
“It is high time for us to practice agriculture because it has been a major challenge in Nigeria that what is being done in agriculture is not up to what is being expected.
“This is an opportunity for we students under this project with OCP to bring in what has been taught from our class to the field, this is actually an extension work and by God’s grace we will try our best to see that we put a smile on the farmers face and we make sure that what we have been trained in will be passed across to the farmers and we promise that in 6 months, the yield of the farmers will be increased”, Ogunshola said.
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