The Nigeria Country Director of AGRA, Rufus Idris, has disclosed that over 11 million farmers have been reached with new agriculture technologies through AGRA’a agriculture extension model called Community Based Advisory.
This model, according to him, has been able to close the gap between extension agents to farmers from one extension agent to 5000 farmers, adding that there are plans to further reduce it.
Speaking with Tribune Online shortly after receiving an award of recognition from the Nigerian Government for their contribution to development of agriculture extension services in Nigeria and Africa, Idris said AGRA has been able to promote an agriculture model that has really worked.
He said they have their AGRA 3.0 strategy where they intend to scale up some of the works that they have done and make more impact at a larger scale.
“We have been able to promote an agriculture model that has really worked, that is the community based advisory model which is mainly a model that is private sector driven and to ensure that farmers at the last mile get access extension services.
“So far, a lot of community based advisors have been deployed out there to support and we have more than 11 million smallholder farmers that have now been reached through those avenues and now they have been able to access new technologies with other extension services as well”, he said.
He said AGRA has been able to significantly close the gap between the number of extension service agents to the number of farmers that are being served.
“It used to be one extension service agent to more than 5000 smallholder farmers. We have been able to close that to one extension agent to lower than 500 smallholder farmers and we are working harder to see how we can further close that gap.
“We are also trying to reduce the distance that farmers have to travel to access inputs. This, I believe, we have recorded significant achievement as well. We have reduced farmers having to travel more than 20 km to access input, it has now been reduced to less than 10km for them to access inputs, we are still working to further reduce that as well”, Idris noted.
Reacting to the award, Idris said “it means recognition of the work that we have done for several decades in Africa, promoting innovative extension services, closing that distance between smallholder farmers and access to extension services and also ensure that farmers get access to innovative extension services that are not just public sector driven but more of private sector collaboration as well that ensure sustainability in that particular process.
“This means a lot, and it is also a call to do more because we still have a lot more farmers in Nigeria and Africa that are still struggling to access the right kind of extension services, so we are still working more”.
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