Lagos CADP boosts commercial operations of farmers
Abdul-Ghaniyy Alabi-Ojolowo, a member of Rice 4 Job Commercial Cooperative, is one of the beneficiaries of the Lagos Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP). He is also a member of the Commercial Agriculture Development Association (CADA) representing rice value chain.
Farm
Rice 4 Job Cooperative Farms was established in Itoikin, Idena Epe, in 2009. The farm was actually started with two hectares of farmland and has extended to 10 hectares of farm land. According to him, the support he received from Lagos CADP encouraged him to expand his farmland.
Operation
“We, the cluster of farmers around Itoikin, Ise, Igbogun in Lagos State have been doing our businesses under an umbrella of an association called Resofam with more than 200 members dealing with rice production, processing and marketing. But when CADP came up, those of us in the same interest line came together as a group and formed a Commodity Interest Group (CIG) under the project; each CIG has 10 members. The operation of the group is rice production with other groups in processing and marketing.”
CADP interventions
“As farmers, our CIG has benefited a lot. We have benefited with a tractor; this has made it easy for us to prepare land. The cost of land preparation has drastically reduced as a result. The project also supported us with the procurement of bird scare (gas gun). Before the project intervention, there has been bird gathering and damage of the rice in the field. But with the introduction/demonstration of gas gun technology by CADP to farmers, it has helped us to reduce the cost we spend on scaring of birds. What we used to do was to hire people to stay on the farm for about two months – morning till evening, and we had to feed them morning and afternoon, and possibly evening in addition to their pay. But now, we just power the gas gun with gas and a very small cylinder which has the capacity to fire 10,000 gun shots at the intervals to drive away birds.
“Initially, we also hired people to harvest our fields. They used their hands, knives or sickles. About 20 people, usually women, spend 10 days to harvest one hectare, but the combine harvester procured with CADP support can harvest two hectares or even three hectares in one day. The machine takes just 25 litres of diesel, then the charges of the operator is about N5000 to N6000. This is far less than the cost of manual labour.
“Also, inputs like fertilisers, seeds, herbicides, insecticides and so on have been given to us by CADP. The list goes on and on.”
Output/yield
“With the intervention, someone like me cultivates 10 hectares with all the farm implements at our reach instead of two hectares. Before the intervention, the highest yield we recorded was 950kg (23.7% of target) per hectare which when packaged gives not up to 10 bags of paddy rice. But now with the intervention, we are proud of harvesting 2.5 tons (62% of target) per hectares, which is three times more. When bagged, these give us nothing less than 50 bags per hectares. So, the intervention has been a great blessing to farmers generally.”
Apart from rice farmers, the Lagos CADP also supports farmers engaged in aquaculture (fish) and poultry production.
Aquaculture value chain
The project had supported 1483 farmers under the aquaculture value chain with various inputs, including collapsible fish tank, extruding technology, fish seed, solar submersible pumping machine smoking kiln, pen and cage culture system, tricycle, etc. With the support of CADP through acquisition of improved smoking kilns and improved packaging materials, Commodity Interest Groups (CIGs) in the state under the aquaculture processing value chain made breakthrough in smoked Ffish export to United States of America.
Poultry value chain
The project has supported 1284 farmers under the rice value chain with various inputs including nipple fitted battery cages, tricycle, egg transport crates, day old chicks, point of lay and cage, hatchery, combined hatchery and incubator, de-feathering machine, blast freezer, cold room, etc. Promotion of the use of Nipple Fitted Battery Cage for poultry birds by project beneficiaries as against the open drinkers system has resulted in reduction of mortality and disease transmission by over 15 percent, increase in egg production by 20 percent, feed wastage by over 40 percent
Rice value chain
The project had supported 741 farmers under the rice value chain with various inputs including tractor, milling machine, threshing machine, combine harvester, storage bin, rotary dryer, willower, de-stoner, agro chemicals, tricycle, improved seeds, motorised sprayer, etc. With intervention of CADP, land preparation for rice has changed from manual to mechanised system with provision of 4WD tractors and implements. This has reduced the cost of land preparation.
Infrastructure
A total of 22.19km rural roads in 10 locations have been constructed. This has impacted the travel time to the nearest market within the communities to reduce from 22 minutes before intervention to 18.77 minutes now (13.95% reduction).
Average transport cost of farm produce has witnessed a reduction also, varying from N4,000 to N3800/ metric tons (5%) in the first year, and between N3,180 and N4,500 (4%) now. With the road intervention, a number of commercial activities are presently springing up along their intervention locations, notable among which are: establishment of 35 new poultry farms in Aiyedoto Poultry Estate, Ojo; a total of 78 additional farms have sprung up across the sites, about 80 new shops, 76 new buildings with an average of six additional vehicular movement per hour were recorded. The road intervention has also impacted on the social lives of affected communities.
In the area of energy support to complement agro processing activities in the state, provision of extension lines and accessories among others in 10 locations had been fully implemented.
Overall
CADP intervention contributed 12.75 percent to the state agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2012. The project has directly supported 3,508 beneficiaries and has indirectly influenced over 80,000 beneficiaries including those who had benefited from the rural infrastructure interventions. Over 6,000 jobs had been created directly and over 12,000 indirect jobs as a result of the interventions.
By: OLUYINKA ALAWODE