IFAD to begin dry season farming in Nigeria to mitigate flood impact

The International Fund for Agricultural Development-Value Chain Development Programme (IFAD-VCDP) is set to commence dry season farming in Nigeria.

VCDP’s acting National Programme Coordinator, Dr Fatima Aliyu, revealed the plans and said the move aims to mitigate the impact of flooding across the most affected nine states of the country.

The states listed to include: Anambra, Benue, Ebonyi, Niger, Ogun and Taraba, Kogi, Enugu and Nasarawa. He decried that VCDP states were the worst affected by the current flood ravaging parts of the country.

“Immediate commencement of dry season farming across the states is our priority to ensure food security for the rural farmers whose farms produce were washed away by the flood. The programme coordinator identified some of the worst affected states including Kogi and Anambra among others,” said Dr Fatima.

Flood’s impact

Aliyu said that six out of the eight local governments of Anambra where the programme was being implemented have been inundated by flood. She also listed some of the organisation’s recently constructed infrastructure and facilities destroyed by the flood to include processing centres, culverts and mini bridges. The disaster had not only caused colossal losses to the farmers but the programme as well as various states of the programme.

“The major activity now for us is to see how we will rehabilitate our farmers. The flood occurred towards the harvest season, especially for rice and washed away our crops. So, IFAD’s priority is achieving food security. How do we relieve our farmers, how do we mitigate the impact of this flood on their food security? Because everything is food first. Therefore, we are going to increase the number of our dry season activities this year so that it will mitigate the effect of flooding. This is to enable them to have some food, especially rice in their homes for consumption this year,” she said.

Aliyu said IFAD would continue to promote climate-smart agriculture it had already started. Farmers will be exposed to more agri technologies and introduce varieties of rice and cassava that are flood tolerant and have better yields and are early maturing.