Communities in Adamawa donates land to NALDA for wheat farming, cow fattening
By Halima ABDULKADIRI
Two communities in Adamawa State, Ribadu and Sabon Gari, Yolde Pate in Fufore and and Yola South Local Government Areas respectively has donated lands to the National Agricultural Lands Development Authority (NALDA) for wheat farming and cow fattening respectively.
The Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer NALDA, Prince Paul Ikonne said the land donated by the Ribadu community will boost Nigeria’s wheat production and foreign exchange when it becomes operational.
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Aaccording to him, NALDA will sign a Memorandum of Understanding MoU with the community for smooth take-off of the project.
He also explained that wheat was strategically selected because of its viability in the community, therefore bring on board more people to the wheat value chain in order to meet huge demand of the commodity.
He also made it known that the farm is embarked upon in order to create employment for 1000 young people from the community, on a two youth per hectares sharing ratio in wheat farming.
He received the land at the palace of His Royal Highness Dr Abubakar Aliyu Ribadu (Gidado), where he maintained that President Muhammadu Buhari is passionate in empowering farmers cross the country as his administration has put in place policies and programmes to make farmers emerging millionaires through agribusiness.
He said: “What we do is to empower the farmers; the President is interested in raising more Millionaires from farming and the agricultural sector and also attracts more people to go into agribusiness.
“When we take possession of this land we would also allocate it to the indigenes, people from your community that you would nominate, our job is to put them through how to go through dry season farming, provide all the inputs and all the support that they need.”
He also assured that NALDA is ready to off-take produce from farmers in order to give them high profit from their business while there is availability of the commodity in the market.
“Most times farmers sell at very low prices because they just want to sell off and get some money but NALDA buying it back from them means they would sell at the right price in order to get value and NALDA would also recoup the investment they have made”, he added.
It was also made known that bulldozers will commence land clearing activities first week of November of 2021, while land allocation will start at the same time to selected qualified farmers.
Expressing appreciation for acceptance of the donated land to NALDA, His Royal Highness Dr Abubakar Aliyu Ribadu (Gidado), assured him support on the project.
Ribadu also mentioned that the process of engaging farmers in the community should be properly done in order for genuine farmers to benefit from the project, and promised that the list of the beneficiaries would be made available to NALDA before the end of October 2021.
Earlier, the NALDA boss and his team were at Sabon-Gari, Yolde Pate, in Yola South Local Government Area, of Adamawa State to see land donated to it, where he explained that the land will be for cow fattening that would boost milk and meat production in the State to meet demands across the country.
The Executive Secretary and his team were at the rice farm to see how the harvest is ongoing, where he disclosed that about 20 young people from the community that have been engaged on a daily pay plan for the harvesting of the commodity.
He also added that there are plans to commence dry season wheat farming as well.
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It will be recalled that the rice farm commenced with land preparations and inputs supplies activities earlier in 2021, which five boreholes were drilled with an installed generator plant to power them, but the farm also has a stream which serves as natural water source that would be utilize to support irrigation activities on the farm.
He further disclosed that with the wheat and rice farms, training fish farmers on best practices by providing them with stainless steel ovens, and other upcoming projects including a mega groundnut storage facility to be established in Hong Local Government Area of Adamawa State, and the cow fattening facility to be established in Yolde Pate in Yola South, the agency has covered the three Senatorial Districts of the State.
