THE Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), has commenced its Agro Geo-Cooperative Project in Alimosho Local Government, yesterday.
NIRSAL PLC, with an office in Ikeja, tries to make all smallholder farmers, farmer leaders and aggregators key into its Agro Geo-Cooperative model created for the purpose of sustainable farm/field structuring and governance, to enable sustainable access to finance, quality inputs and structured markets through NIRSAL’s facilitation.
According to a statement released by the Lagos Coordinator, Mr Olaiya Adedeji Oladele, NIRSAL "oversaw the execution of all three activities by Unity FCA Multipurpose Cooperative, a group of poultry farmers who applied to be part of the project."
The exercise, which aims at creating 16,000 Agro Geo-Cooperatives (ranging from 10 hectares to 20,001 hectares and above) on 4 million hectares of farmland and enrolling about 8 million farmers across Nigeria, who are expected to produce about 12 million metric tonnes of Grain Product Equivalent (GPE) annually over the medium to long term, oversaw three important aspects of farming yesterday.
These aspects included: the setting up of field governance structures, farming suitability analysis, and farm geo-mapping.
In line with this, Community Leaders, Individuals, Enterprises, Corporate Bodies, Graduates, N-POWER Beneficiaries, Active and Retired leaders and farmers in the ADP programme, World Bank FADAMA Programme, USAID MARKETS Programme, IFAD Value Chain Development Programme, The World Bank Climate Adaptation and Business Support Programme, AfDB Agric Programmes, the DFID’s Propcom Maikarfi Programme, the SASSAKAWA Global 2000 Programme and others that meet NIRSAL PLC’s eligibility requirements and who are domiciled in or have access to their communities and farmers, are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity as a means of employment and a source of income generation through supporting the productive activities of their self-organized Agro Geo-Cooperatives.