The Nigerian Agribusiness Group (NABG) has stated that unsustainable farming practices such as bush burning, high levels of post-harvest losses, and long turnaround stand due to the lack of infrastructure to remove farm produce “are major contributors to emissions that cause climate change.”
NABG’s director-general, Dr. Manzo Daniel Maigari, stated this Friday at a two-day training for women, youths and smallholder farmers in the North-east with the objective of advocacy to increase women, young farmers and agropreneurs’ agricultural productivity.
Speaking on the impact of climate change on agriculture, Maigari said all over the world, climate change “is a major challenge to agriculture just as agriculture is the biggest contributor to climate change.”
He urged Nigerian youths to engage more in value-chain agriculture as means of earning a sustainable livelihood, adding that “going into agribusiness today is more like a gold mine for solopreneurs.”
“We want the youths to understand that the biggest business around now is agriculture therefore they can go into it and make a sustainable livelihood. The norm in our society before is that it is the poor man that farms but it is no longer so,” he said.
Also speaking, the Head of Segment, Climate Smart Agriculture, Engr. Ochuko Odibo, said the group has deliberately chosen women and young men to participate in the program because they are the future of the country.
He said, “We are looking at smallholder farmers, we are not targeting big farmers. So far, we have been able to look at several issues in the area of nutrition, climate-smart methodology and technology, insecurity and how it affects the farmers as well as possible additional financing from Carbon credit as a means of getting something extra to do their farming.
“After this training, we are going to set up a follow-up team that will monitor progress and how they are implementing what they have learnt here today on changing their style of farming by going into climate-smart agriculture.”
One of the participants from the Smallholder Women Farmers Association, Mrs. Malata Adamu, said the training came at the right time when farmers were preparing for the farming season.
