Taraba state is to pilot the first phase of the wet season rice planting programme, designed to create employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for 1,000 women and youths.
Project Coordinator of the programme, Fevick Resources, Samuel Adeshina told journalists in Abuja, that the initiative will create strong and effective linkages to quality agro-input and services, including mechanisation, credit, insurance, technology, information and market for rural farmers to improve their livelihoods and build sustainable agriculture.
According to him, it will be a sustainable rice transformational programme which empowers clusters of women and youth agripreneurs farming together on a contiguous arable farmland to produce high quality and quantity of paddy rice for processing during the wet season farming.
Adeshina said the farmers are to produce high quality and quantity of paddy rice for processors to get high milling outturn which will increase the profit margin of the women and youths.
He added that the new wet season rice farming project will link farmers to new technologies and high yield seedlings.
According to him, the variety of rice seedlings will be tested to determine the ruggedness, virility and flood resistance to see how they will survive in submerged areas during serious flood and ozone depletion
“Taraba state is hosting the pilot programme and the farmers under Fevick Resource supervision will have three layers of credit open to them.
“This includes the direct fertiliser aspect which will give the farmers NPK and UREA. There is also the the seeds variety Faro 66 and 67.
“The third part of the credit to the farmers is the Crop Protection Product (CPP) which is the aspect that covers labour and services”, Adeshina said.
He said this will cover land preparation, harvesting, threshing and aggregation.
He disclosed further that participants will be selected and clustered as a registered geo-cooperative, having its own corporate governance structure on contiguous farmland, adding that they will be responsible for supervising and managing their respective plots as well as working together as a geo-cooperative.
He explained that agriprenuers and farming communities will be trained on improved rice growing techniques with emphasis on selection of rice seeds varieties, optimal water usage, fertilisation, plant protection and post-harvesting.
