50 farmers benefit from NDE Agric Extension training in Gombe
Following the dearth of Agriculture extension services in Gombe about 50 farmers have been trained by National Directorate of Employment to end disproportionate ratio of 1 worker to 2,000 farmers in the field.
Speaking on Friday during the training, NDE Director General Abubakar Fikpo, said that the beneficiaries were carefully selected and trained to mitigate food crisis.
Fikpo, who was represented by State Coordinator Mustapha Hassan, urged the participants to transfer the knowledge garnered in improving the production of crops within their communities.
He said, “Currently 50 persons are been trained on Agriculture Extension. The essence is to empower them with requisite skills to step it down to other farmers. This training is for unemployed persons that will further retrain local at the community level.”
Also speaking, Director Rural Employment Promotion NDE, Dr. Mbata Michael, who was represented by Faruq Abdulkareem Senior Rural Employment Officer, revealed that extension service play key roles in ensuring food security.
“Based on what we are seeing we are looking at 1 extension agent to almost 2,000 farmers. We want to see how we can reduce that gap. We want to see how individual farmers can transfer knowledge the youths or to other farmers. Then we can have higher productivity, tackle food security and by extension tackle poverty,” Michael said.
Similarly, 108 persons have been empowered by National Directorate of Employment (NDE), with N100,000 each to boost their agricultural schemes in the State.
The schemes include; Agricultural Enhancement Scheme (39 persons), Community based Agricultural Empowerment Scheme (21 persons), Graduate Agricultural Enhancement Scheme (24 persons) and Sustainable Agricultural Development Scheme with 24 beneficiaries.
He advised them to use the opportunity to contribute to food sufficiency of the state and the country.
Fikpo said, “The beneficiaries were recruited and trained in four schemes within agriculture related activities. All the participants were given N100,000 each to establish their business after the training.
“These schemes cut across food processing, livestock farming, and modern farming activities. We have participants that are both skilled and unskilled. What we intend to achieve here is to improve to food aspect of life generally, so that people can go into farming to feed themselves, family and contribute to the nation’s food sustainability.”
