NIRSAL targets 8 million farmers in new financing program, training

THE Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Landing (NIRSAL) has called on smallholder farmers and other agricultural stakeholders to enroll in a new programme it has launched to ease access to finances, training, inputs and other incentives in the sector.

NIRSAL said the package has a target of enrolling eight million farmers across the country with the hope of producing about 12 million metric tonnes of Grain Product Equivalent (GPE) on a yearly basis over the medium to long term.

The agency disclosed this on its Twitter account last week.

“The exercise aims at creating 16,000 Agro Geo-Cooperatives (ranging from 10 hectares to 20,001 hectares and above) on four million hectares of farmland and enrolling about eight million farmers across Nigeria who are expected to produce about 12 million metric tonnes of Grain Product Equivalent (GPE) annually over the medium to long term,” the statement said.

Anne Ihugba, NIRSAL’s head of corporate communications confirmed the post.

To achieve this, the agency urged eligible agricultural stakeholders “who are domiciled in or have access to their communities and farmers to take advantage of the opportunity as a means of employment and a source of income generation.”

NIRSAL is a non-bank financial institution established by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2013 with the mandate to stimulate the flow of affordable financial investment into the agricultural sector, by de-risking the agribusiness finance value chains.

This is done through its five strategic pillars- Risk sharing, insurance, technical assistance, incentive and rating.

It advised interested stakeholders to enroll via https://nirsal.com/agrogeocoop/

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