By Aliyu Garba, Zaria
Agro processing , productivity enhancement and livelihood involvement support project(APPEALS) has embarked on intensive farmers enlightenment and capacity building to curtail post harvest loses among maize farmers in kaduna state.
This was the focus of a three day sensitisation program organised for farmers group in Giwa,zaria and soba local government areas of the state
Addressing participants the project coordinator in the state Alhaji yahaya Aminu explained that over forty percent of anticipated crop yield are lost due to poor knowledge of post harvest techniques by farmers,hence the need to acquaint them with required skills to enable them minimise and even prevent such loses if adequately applied in their farming practice.
He said kaduna state was among six other states of the federation that attracted a world Bank assistance to improve farming techniques based on their unique production challenges whereby kaduna opt to tackle post harvest loses with a view to provide training to farmers and identify their basic requirement and them support to prevent the menace.
“”The primary objective of the project is to improve production among small and medium scale farmers and improve value addition among priority value chain as researchers indicated that farmers suffer forty percent loses due to inappropriate post harvest management”he said.
Alhaji yahaya Aminu appealed to stakeholders at the state and local government levels to support the project through effective sensitisation of farmers in their midst to indicate interested to benefit from the program based on their peculiar farming challenges.
Resource persons drawn from the institute of agricultural research Ahmad Bello university Zaria delivered lecture on variety of appropriate farm production practices devoid of harvest loses of crops and ways of required application of farm inputs including fertilizer and pesticides etc
Participants at the sensitisation program expressed appreciation on the initiative and lauded APPEALS for identifying with farmers in various areas of farming challenges with a view to addressing them.
The sensitisation was conducted at Kayi,Yaskwake and yakasasai villages of Giwa,Zaria and soba local government areas of kaduna state.