The Kano agro body, Kano State AgroPastoral Development Project (KSADP) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have disclosed that the duo would be joining forces to begin series of research on food security aimed at reducing poverty, strengthening food and nutrition security across the state.
They explained that the collaboration had been made to ensure the state population are well covered in its food basket and that necessary loopholes responsible for food insecurity are identified and block across the state to achieve food and nutrition security and strengthen farmers’ socio-economic endeavour.
As stated, the two body would provide extension support, market linkages and training on best management practices, among other things, to crops and legumes farmers in the state, through the collaboration to ensure vibrant agriculture sector that yields that contributes to the state’s revenue.
The KASDP Project Coordinator, Ibrahim Muhammad, said that the long-term collaboration with CGIAR, a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security had become imperative to put the state on positive indices in term of agriculture and food production across the value chain.
Speaking when he received a delegation from the group, led by Dr. Alpha Kamara of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, IITA, at the project office in Kano recently, Muhammad said that the CGIAR was expected to provide technical backstopping in various thematic areas for the KSADP.
According to him, the technical backstopping is funded by the Islamic Development Bank and the Lives and Livelihoods Fund (LLF) and in executing our mandate, we must work together with you to address such issues as training of extension agents and technical support, as well as issues of value chain development implementation including input access, technologies access, markets linkages and credit access.
“The project has confidence in the ability of your organizations like IITA and ICRISAT because they have been working for decades in Kano, in areas of agricultural productivity and product enhancement and the result of your work is very glaring. We count on your expertise and because you are conversant with the socio-cultural peculiarities of Kano, we are very hopeful that the desired results will be achieved,” Muhammad said.
Speaking, Earlier, Kamara explained that the visit was to discuss critical issues such as the development of harmonized farming systems between SASAKAWA and KNARDA interventions in the Kano state AgroPastoral Development Project.
He noted that under the KSADP, his consortium will help in the training of selected Masters degree and PhD students from the State in Milk processing, Rangeland management and Extension at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and Bayero University, Kano.
“We will also work with seed companies to secure breeders seeds for target commodities and support seed multiplication,” he added.
