IFAD Offers Free Education To Farmers

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) says it is offering free basic education to farmers in communities benefiting from its programmes.

The State Programme Officer, Mr Innocent Ogbin, told newsmen last Monday in Calabar that the idea was to improve the literacy standard and expose farmers to modern techniques and the value chain processes.

Ogbin said the programmes were run in collaboration with Adult and Non-formal Education Departments of the Local Government Councils and added that some farmers had graduated with First School Leaving Certificates.

“Through these literacy centres, women and men in our communities are taught how to read and write and some of them have graduated obtaining qualifications such as first school leaving certificates.

“We employ the services of retired headmasters and teachers in these communities as facilitators. We also offer support in terms of provision of allowances to these facilitators. And to provide materials, such as books, dusters, teaching aids and black board for the teachers to teach. So far, over 200 of the farmers have been trained across the six centres in the state,” he said.

He said some of the farmers had taken Common Entrance Examinations to further their education and the youths among them were being groomed to handle some farming equipments.

“Right now we are in the process of procuring equipment that will empower the youths that have been trained.

“So, we are expecting to bring all of them together before the end of first quarter of 2013, to handover these equipment to them and see how they can use these skills to create jobs for themselves,”  he said.

He further said IFAD had been able to introduce business enterprise in agriculture to the farmers including teaching them how to draw business plans. According to him, IFAD in the state had made significant achievements in crops production, including rice, cassava and yam as well as non- timber forest activities.

He said they had to diversify into non-timber forest activities according to the objectives of the programme.

“We need to diversify the activities of our farmers into other areas in line with the objective of the programmes,”  he said.

He said a total of 108 hectares were ploughed for cassava alone, adding that the yield was between 20-25 tons per hectare,noting that He  the recent flooding in parts of the state was responsible for low yield in some communities.