The National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF) engaged stakeholders in the agribusiness value chain on the modalities of strengthening Nigeria’s agricultural input supply and productivity.
“As we reflect on the implementation of the first phase of this program, the NADF remains firmly committed to evidence-based learning and continuous process improvement for optimal efficiency in the delivery of our mandate,” Mohammed Ibrahim, Executive Secretary, NADF, stated during the NADF-Farm Input Supply programme roundtable engagement with processors in Lagos on Wednesday.
Ibrahim, who was represented by Abiodun Sosanya, Head, Corporate Services, NADF, said that the pilot intervention of the rollout was targeted at enhancing input supply and agricultural productivity throughout the grower systems.
He also admitted that the pilot scheme of the intervention faced some challenges that affected planting cycles and expected yields. “These challenges are real, and they underscore the complexity of implementing agricultural interventions such as the NADF-Farm Inputs Supply programme”.
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Ibrahim, however, reaffirmed that NADF’s commitment to partner with processors in ensuring accountability and continuous process improvements in all its interventions. He therefore called on the processors to engage the Fund for robust and practical outcomes to help NADF come up with better support input systems, agricultural productivity and national agricultural transformation at large.
“The NADF remains optimistic that your insights, experiences, and recommendations will play an important role in shaping a more efficient, transparent, and climate-responsive second phase of the program – ensuring better impact and sustainability,” Ibrahim stated.
Femi Ojelade, CEO, Vemac Farms Limited, Oyo State, said processors, smallholder farmers and the government must work collaboratively to improve food security in Nigeria. He also urged the NADF to ensure that processors get inputs ahead of the farming season.
“We understand it’s the first phase. But the second phase, they have to work assiduously to make sure that most processors actually get their input at least a month before the planting season,” Ojelade said.
Aroge Temitope, Managing Director, Arog Bio Allied Agro Services Limited, said the scheme is supportive to processors in ensuring free flow of raw materials along the agribusiness value-chain. “So, for us, it’s a good project, and it’s actually very supportive of food security and wealth creation in the rural areas.”
According to him, the project came in timely, and had enabled his company to access input and support for its outgrower base. He said that his company was able to cultivate for the 2025, 2026 seasons by leveraging the NADF Agro 1.0 in terms of having enough cassava across three states of Ogun, Ondo and Ekiti States.
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Adebanke Fajana, Head, Strategy and Planning, NADF, said the Fund intended to reach five million small-holder farmers with its Agro 2.0 scheme. According to her, the NADF is leveraging the organised private sector, which is the processors, to reach small-holder farmers.
She added that the NADF is working collaboratively with the processors to ensure that some of the challenges, bottlenecks, or lessons learned from the field in its pilot phase can be curated for coordinated and improved iteration of the scheme.
“We have a very robust system of monitoring and evaluation, where we have regional monitors, we have state monitors, which have boots on ground that go into the field to look at what the cultivation level is, what the impute usage is, adoption of good agronomic practices, and a lot of other things to ensure that not only do we just dispense or make provisions for this impute, we also ensure proper impute utilization and good agronomic practices adoption for the end-users,” Fajana said.
