WAAPP convenes 29 agric commissioners in Abuja over low yield concerns

Amid concerns over low agricultural yields, the West African Agricultural Productivity Programme in Nigeria (WAAPP-Nigeria) Wednesday in Abuja brought together 29 commissioners and permanent secretaries of agriculture from across the country to explore ways to avert a food crisis.

“The scientific meeting hosted by WAAPP, offers a unique opportunity to share ideas in an effort to sensitise farmers and create awareness on combining yield improvement technologies with improved quality seeds and precise inputs,” said Sunday Ochono, the permanent secretary in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), who declared the event open.

WAAPP is a World Bank assisted programme for member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that is designed to make agriculture more productive and sustainable and to enhance sub-regional economic integration.

According to Damian Okechukwu Chikwendu ,the National Coordinator of WAAPP-Nigeria, the project works towards achieving this objective by integrating value chains of its targeted commodities which include cassava, maize, rice, sorghum, yam, aquaculture poultry and fruit processing.

WAAPP is presently being implemented in 13 out of the 15 ECOWAS countries and is coordinated at the sub-regional level by the West African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD).

In Nigeria, it is being implemented by the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN).

One of the areas in which WAAPP is intervening is in the provision of improved seed varieties.

The scarcity of improved and appropriate varieties of agricultural seeds has been one of the constraints to high agricultural productivity in Nigeria, Chikwendu said.

WAAPP plans to close this gap by supporting the efforts of both the federal and state governments in quality agricultural seed supply, through a multi-pronged investment in the seed sector, he added.

He further said that the body supports the funding of National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARI’s) to increase the quality and quantity of breeder and foundation seeds for various priority crops.

Private seed companies are also supported to increase the supply of certified seeds through WAAPP’s agricultural sustainability intervention.

To this end, WAAPP has signed MoUs with various Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs). The state ADPs in their pursuit of rural seed sufficiency, have helped nurture and support community-based seed production efforts through the provision of close supervision and technical assistance by seed officers, he said.