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German International Cooperation (GIZ) says it has so far trained 97,449 smallholders cocoa farmers across the six focal states in Nigeria.
Annemarie Mathess, regional programme director, Sustainable Smallholder Agri-business Programme, disclosed this at the sixth anniversary and flag off of 2018 farming season by Edo State Forum of Farmer Business School Multipurpose Cooperative Union Limited in Benin City, the Edo State capital.
Mathess, represented by Ayo Akinola, senior technical advisor of GIZ-SSAB, said out of the total 9,630 farmers were from Edo State.
Mathess, who says the GIZ operates in more than 130 countries in the world, noted that it annual turnover was €2.1 billion, in development programmes raging from agriculture, economic development, renewable energy, social, health, finance, water, environment, among others.
She said the sustainable smallholder agro-business (SSAB) programme was one of the programmes conducted in partnership with the Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) for cocoa farmers across six producing states of Abia, Cross River, Edo, Ekiti, Ondo and Osun.
She also added that in enhancing the capacity of and livelihoods of smallholder cocoa farmers, SSAB deployed the Farmer Business School (FBS), Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and the Cooperative Business Schools (CBS) as its three core training tools.
Mathess, however, appealed to the Edo State government to fund agricultural development programmes as well as the state forum of farmer business school multipurpose cooperative Union limited to scale-up and expand their services, resulting in competitive production, growth and employment.
While opining that such impacts can also contribute to reduce migration, she stated that government’s assistance in funding and supporting farmers’ organisation’s can sustain their potentialities for growth and development.
The regional programme director of the organization, who commended the Edo State government for the strides so far taken in the agricultural sector, observed that the farmers business school can be the government’s strong partner in internal revenue generation, employment creation while serving as a formidable anchor to further support and grow the cocoa vision in the state.
Earlier, the president of Edo State Forum of Farmer Business School Multipurpose Cooperative Union Limited, Frederick Ekpenriebe Thomas, said the association currently has about 10,000 smallholder farmers, that have acquired business and entrepreneurial skills from the farmer business school.
Thomas, said about 2000 were trained on good agricultural practice for cocoa, maize and cassava, 52 cooperative representatives further trained on cooperative principles and management in the cooperative business school.
