John Shiklam in Kaduna
The Director General of Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG), Dr. Manzo Maigari has advocated for irrigation farming as an alternative to raining season farming to avoid massive destruction of farms by flood.
He, however, said farmers could take insurance against possible flooding if they chose to farm during raining season, so that they would be compensated in the event of such flooding.
Speaking at the weekend in Kaduna, at a two-day workshop for women and young farmers and agri-entrepreneurs in the north -west zone, Maigari also said farmers needed to be enlightened about climate change so as to stop the practices that exacerbate its effect on the environment and agriculture.
“What we need to do is to begin to look at alternatives to raining season farming. If you know there will be flood that you have no control over, why do you plant around that time?
“You should wait until when the flood is over and then you can do irrigation. If you have the insurance that covers the possibility of flooding, when you lose your crop, you will get compensated,” he said.
Maigari, a former commissioner for Agriculture in Kaduna state, stressed the need for research development on how to handle flooding.
He said, “We need to focus on research and development to determine whether there are rice or crop varieties that can survive flood and stay under water for one or two months and does not die. Farmers need to understand all these.
“But what is more important is that it is our practices as human beings that are increasing the impact of climate change and even bringing about the climate change itself”.
He said, unsustainable farm practices like bush burning that generate a lot of carbon dioxide and goes to affect the atmosphere, allowing a lot of farm produce to rot, eg oranges, fruits and the rest of them must stop.
Maigari added, “workshops like this served to provide farmers with this information and understanding that the path which we are now, is a path to self-destruction. We can retrace our steps and begin to do new things.
“I was speaking to the chairman of climate action trust and they are looking at the possibility of planting 10 million trees or supporting small holder farmers to plant 10 million trees across all the states in Northern Nigeria.
“These are practices are practices that will help us restore our environment and even our livelihood”.
He said the workshop was aimed at bringing youths, farmers and players in the agric sector to sensitise and educate them on the challenges of climate change which is the most important and critical challenge that farmers face across Africa.
“Most importantly also it is to sensitise them on commodity standard, best practices in farming which will give them competitive advantage when it comes to marketing their products,” he added.
According to him, “Most of the times we just farm, we don’t care about standards, grading and that makes our farmers lose a lot of money.
“Basically the thrust for this is to first achieve inclusion that is why it is particularly targeted at youths and women.”
He said participants were drawn from the seven north-west states.
Maigari said the programme was the initiative that was 100 per cent funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the Nigeria AgriBusiness Group as implementer while the federal ministry of agriculture and the Kaduna state ministry of agriculture are partners.
Also in a presentation, Emeka Oruonye, a professor of Geography from Taraba State University, Jalingo, noted that climate volatility, frequent extreme weather events and temperature changes are the greatest threat to farming and viability of food crop production.
Oruonye said farmers must be educated to understand climate change to address the challenges it poses in the agriculture sector.
