…As 1,000 agripreneurs get Fevick loans
By Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief
The nation’s rice revolution has received a boost as Fevick Resources, a private concern, has provided loans to 1, 000 women and youths to undertake massive rice cultivation across the nation.
The Project Coordinator of Fevick Resources, Mr. Samuel Adeshina, told journalists in Abuja, yesterday, that the new wet-season rice farming project would link farmers to new technologies and high-yield seedlings.
He said that 1, 000 women and youths who are to participate in the novel wet-season rice planting project, have been identified.
According to him, the rice transformational programme would empower clusters of women and youth Agripreneurs farming together on a contiguous arable farmland to produce high quality and quantity of rice paddy for processing during the wet season farming.
READ ALSO: Eid-El-Kabir: Rep begs for understanding over high prices of food, other commodities
He said, “We can derive six to seven metric tonns of rice per hectare by introducing new varieties of very high yielding seedlings.”
He disclosed that Taraba State has been selected to host the pilot programme and that the farmers under Fevick Resource supervision would have three layers of credit open to them.
These include: direct fertilizer supply under which the farmers would receive NPK and UREA; seeds variety supply under which the farmers would receive Faro 66 and 67 ; while the third part of the credit termed, Crop Protection Product (CPP), would cover labour and services.
“The loans will cover land preparation, harvesting, threshing and aggregation,” the Coordinator said
He said that the project would create strong and effective linkages to quality agro-inputs and services including mechanization, credits, insurance, technology, information, and market for rural farmers to improve their livelihoods and build sustainable agriculture.
According to him, “Participants will be clustered as a registered geo-cooperative having its own corporate governance structure on contiguous farmland. They will be ultimately responsible for supervising, managing their respective plots as well as working together as a geo-cooperative.”
In his remarks, Chief Binuga Gargea, the Gargea Donga said “the project has gingered our farmers to be up and doing, to embrace the program and take to rice production so that they will not be idle in the wet season farming and they will equally be busy during the dry season farming too and that will actually fill their pockets”.
He called on Taraba State Governor, Architect Darius Ishaku, to provide the necessary government support for the project to achieve the desired results.
Vanguard News Nigeria
The post Rice revolution gets boost appeared first on Vanguard News.
Comments