In a build-up to the forthcoming dry-season farming early next year, cowpea producers, processors, and financiers are already strategising on ways to raise the number of farmers growing the crop, and optimise yield and income during the period.
Tajudeen Kareem, National Publicity Secretary of Cowpea Processors Association, said at a sensitisation exercise in Abuja organised by the farmers that the exercise was geared towards preparing farmers to embrace cowpea farming as a business.
According to Kareem, “What we are doing is basically to sensitise farmers on the appropriate measures to take to have a proper yield and link them up with off-takers. This is the final process of getting the farmers prepared for the dry-season farming which commences latest in February “.
He said the group was taking the farmers through the basic issues involved in dry-season farming to enable them work smarter.
The states chosen for the early dry-season farming include Borno, Yobe, Gombe and Adamawa.
Kareem added that the initiative was geared towards building farming as a business.
Also contributing, Fatima Kachalla Shittu, a board member who represented the President of the Cowpea Association of Nigeria, told journalists that the sensitisation was key to enabling farmers understand the economics of cowpea production and have proper yield.
He said the initiative was in preparation for the Central Bank of Nigeria anchor borrowers programme geared towards raising domestic output and curbing Nigeria’s huge food import bill.
