Kaduna registers 687 women cooperatives

Category: Business news Published on Sunday, 17 February 2013 05:00 Written by Nan Hits: 1026

The Kaduna Agricultural Development programme (KADP) says it has registered more than 687 women groups under the KADP cooperatives project, to address the challenges of food security.

Mrs Debora Bakut, the Head of Women in Agriculture in the KADP, told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna on Friday that the cooperative groups were registered to access farm inputs and financial support.
Bakut said the groups were eligible to benefit from both the Federal and State Governments soft loans for small scale farmers and the newly introduced e-wallet fertiliser scheme, to enhance food production.
She said that some of the groups would also benefit from the Bank of Agriculture loans as well as the World Bank Commercial Agriculture programme in the state.
According to her, the groups will access improved seeds and seedlings from the state and Federal Governments to boost their yields.
Bakut listed some of the women cooperative groups to include Tomato growers Association, Rice farmers association of Nigeria, poultry farmers, fish farmers, livestock, ginger farmers and pepper growers cooperative groups.
KADP said it has registered more than 200,000 of the 700,000 farming families in the state through data capturing machines.
KADP Programme Manager, Mr Kassim Abdulkadir told NAN that the registered farmers had been issued identification cards.
This will enable them benefit from packages under the Federal Government’s  Agricultural Transformation Programme. (NAN)