DFID scheme to bring 650,000 rural farmers into agribusiness

At a time government agricultural intervention programme comes hard due to funding constraints, the Department For International Development (DFID) has provided an intervention scheme that targets 650,000 Nigerian rural farmer while also launching them into agribusiness.

The scheme tagged ‘Propcom Mai-karfi’ is a flagship agricultural programme of the DFID, a model that assists poor rural farmers and entrepreneurs gain access to the much needed inputs, storage facilities, finance as well as market for their produce.

BusinessDay, during an on-the-spot assessment with the Kaduna farmers, gathers that the scheme supports farmers in improving commercial relationships between large businesses, middlemen/traders and poor famers/households, and increasing private sector investment into rural markets through better distribution channels and product education.

Reacting to this development, key agricultural experts have argued that the scheme could provide some buffer for many rural farmers, especially as states pull out of the Federal Government’s Growth Enhancement Support programme.

Mustapher Mohammed, DFID programmes intervention manager, tells BusinessDay that the programme also uses private sector led approaches by granting agro-inputs directly to farmers while providing financial model that assist them in expanding their agricultural practice.

The scheme, he says, also launches rural farmers into agribusiness by working to eliminate market constraints that hinder smallholder farmers from becoming economic actors within market spaces.

Audu Ogbeh, minister of agriculture, while acknowledging high lending rates by commercial banks to the agricultural sector, said the government would not relent on accessing any help it could in supporting the agricultural sector arising from the poor support farmers were currently getting.

Checks reveal that the high inflationary rates of 16.6 percent is already taking its tolls on the prices of agro-commodity with key interventions of the Federal Government, such as Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES) – that offers agro-inputs to farmers at subsidised rate not forthcoming as states have pulled out.

Currently, states have pulled out of the GES of the Federal Government largely due to financial constraints.

Furthermore, the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) is structurally weak and cannot lend to farmers. Banks are not lending to farmers because of the high lending rate 70 percent of Nigerian subsistence farmers cannot cope with.

“This is the kind of intervention that is key to ensure we can still buy food from the market, since the farmers are the ones currently subsidising food for us,” Matthew Anaedobe, chairman, Abuja-based Baragoni Fish Farm Estate, who got fish inputs from the government, says.

“Over 6,500 farmers have benefited thus far, and the potential for growth during 2016 remains substantial, in addition to aiming further to raise the incomes of 650,000 people in Northern Nigeria by 2018,” Mustapha informs BusinessDay further.

Meanwhile, some of the farmers in Kaduna State inform BusinessDay how the scheme had impact their farming experience. For Samaila Ado, a cooperative community leader of Ungwa Dandima community in Makarfi Local Government Area of the state, “I got 15 bags of fertilizer for myself and some of my cooperative. I used to farm five hectares of farmland in sorghum, maize and rice, I am currently thinking of expansion to 10 hectare with the support of inputs from this scheme.”

Also, Sefia Dalhatu, who farms rice, maize and soya bean says before the intervention of the scheme, she cultivates one and a half hectare of farm land, but with the intervention, she plans to expand it to three hectares come next farming season.

Meanwhile, Justina Joseph Dagu, the LAPO branch manager for Zaria, while attesting to the impact of the scheme on the farmers, says the bank would be more willing to intervene in the scheme, since the farmers are not defaulting in the agro input that is given to them.

“The scheme last year covers the warehouse receipts of agro inputs in Kaduna State. This year, it has been scaled up to Katsina, Kano, Benue and Gombe states, as well as Kaduna.

We intend to engage more input suppliers and financial institutions to partner on leveraging the vast market, which exists in extending input supply chains to smallholder farmers in rural communities,” Nonyelum Unmeasiegbu, the communications manager for the programme, says.