Flood: IFAD Disburses $1.7 m To Farmers

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) says it will disburse 1.7 million dollars to support farmers affected by floods in nine states of the country before ending of the year.
IFAD Country Director, Dede Ekoue, said this on the sideline of the Federal Government/IFAD-Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP) Mid Term Review (MTR) Mission Stakeholders Wrap-Up Workshop in Abuja.
Ekoue, who identified the total flood recovery response for 2022 as 1.7 million dollars, said the organisation had made an initial allocation of 600,000 dollars to farmers in some of the VCDP-benefitting states.
According to her, the distribution of the fund in support of VCDP beneficiaries has already started for dry season farming in Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Anambra, and Enugu States.
“The process will be accelerated this December and early next year.
“The 1.7 million dollars is coming from the regular funding of VCDP,” she said.
Ekoue explained that the gesture was in response to the yearnings of farmers in the course of MTR mission across the VCDP-benefiting states in the country.
She said, “what was important to farmers in the course of visitation is for them to adapt more to help them recover, while the second one is to continue to strengthen the marketing aspect, especially for cassava.
“We noticed that there are more opportunities to strengthen the market aspect for cassava producers; for rice producers, a lot of progress has been made.”
National Programme Coordinator, IFAD-VCDP, Dr Fatima Aliyu, said through the intervention, the organisation and the government will support each of the over 2,000 targeted farmers with 40kg of seed, four bags of NPK, and two bags of Urea.
The farmers, according to her, will also be supported with two litres of herbicides and water pumps for each hectare of farmland that will be rehabilitated, capacity building, and extension services.
“We are training them on good agronomic practices to be abreast on how to cultivate their crops in the dry season.
“We have been doing it but felt we should do more to enable them have a very bumper harvest,”
Director, International Economic Relations Department, Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Dr Aisha Omar, said that the MTR was purposely to assess the performance of the project, determine challenges impeding implementation, the relevance of different component and activities in view of current circumstances.
She said such will enable concerned organisations to decide “if there is the need to restructure the project”.
Omar assured that the department was committed to working with partners and project teams at States and Federal levels to meet the project development objectives and ensure value for money in those facilities obtained.