17th July, 2018
The Edo South Rice Farmers Association on Tuesday in Benin lauded Gov. Godwin Obaseki for the payment of counterpart fund for Fadama 111 Project Additional Financing by the World Bank.
Mrs Bola Ijoma, the Chairman of the association, gave the commendation on behalf of the farmers during the inspection of 280 hectares of rice fields in Edo.
She also told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the payment of the counterpart fund helped the farmers to access the World Bank grant for the project.
Ijoma said the association was made up of 280 members adding that, each farmer owned one hectare rice field.
According to her the farmers were zoned into various rice clusters in different communities of Iguomo, Iguoriakhi and Adeyanba in Ovia North East and Ovia North West local government areas of Edo.
“The link-up of the association to Fadama 111 Additional Financing through the payment of counterpart fund by the state government has helped us to cultivate about 280 hectares of rice farm.
“The 280 farmers in the rice clusters are capable of producing thousands of tonnes of rice per annum.
“We now have the best rice variety known as Faro 44 which has about 40 per cent increase in yield as against ITA 234 rice species we were using before,” she said.
According to her, government has also arranged off takers for the products at prevailing market price.
She, however, appealed to the government for further assistance to enable the 18 out of the 28 groups access the World Bank grant for their rice production.
The State coordinator of Fadama, Mr Edward izevbigie, also noted that the success story of the project was due to the collaboration of the three benefiting communities with the Fadama office.
Izevbigie said the best practices introduced into farming helped a lot in the project as many farmers were trained on modern farming techniques.
He urged the farmers to key into the rice and cassava value chain initiative of the State Government to guarantee food security in the state.