World Bank Supports 10,845 Tomato Farmers in Kano

• World Bank Supports 10,845 Tomato Farmers in Kano

The Fadama II Additional Financing project financed by the World Bank has supported a total of 10,845 farmers in the last 10 months.

The support, according to the Kano State Coordination Office of Fadama, was facilitated through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Dangote Tomato Company and Fadama Production Cluster Group on profitable marketing of tomato.

The Fadama State Project Coordinator, Alhaji Sha’aibu Sulaiman, was quoted in a statement as saying during the project implementation report presented to the Dr. Adetunji Oredipe-led World Bank/FGN 6th Mission on Fadama II Additional Financing that the project in 2016 cropping season supported rice, sorghum and tomato farmers.

He added that sorghum and rice farmers were equally well linked to grand cereal and popular rice farm off takers and through collaboration with the ICRISAT, sorghum farmers were also linked to Honeywell company, which demanded 150,000mt of sorghum from Fadama farmers in Kano.

According to the organisation, the project has prepared four groups comprising 10 members each to earn N58, 500 per month, adding, “In order to build the capacity of farmers towards efficient production, 12 consultants on capacity building have been engaged and they have conducted the train-of-trainers seminars for 120 farmers across eight production clusters of rice, sorghum and tomato.

“Kano State is among the six core states chosen to participate in Fadama III AF Project. Kano has been found to possess a comparative advantage of large irrigable land and irrigation facilities, high production potential and large market, as well as Kadawa, the largest producers of tomato in Nigeria. This provides Kano with an advantage to promote sorghum, rice and tomato value chain over other core states,” the statement read in part.