By Nsan Ndoma-Neji, Calabar
About 1,160 emerging farmers have benefitted from the various intervention programmes of Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises, LIFE-ND, project, initiated by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD, in Cross River State.
IFAD state coordinator in Cross River State, Mr Innocent Ogbin, stated this during a media round table with journalists shortly after he had given the project update, goals and objectives in Calabar yesterday.
The cordinator stated that the project is aimed at improving the economy well-being of youths and women where poverty index among the rural dwellers can be reduced drastically and gave a breakdown of the beneficiaries to include 554 males and 557 females.
Stressing that four commodities of international value that includes rice, poultry, fishery and cassava, were captured by the LIFE intervention, the state coordinator added that the commodities were areas that the state has comparative advantage.
The cordinator maintained that through its intervention, rice yield in the state have increased astronomically from about 1.5 tonnes per hectare to 4.5 tonnes per hectare.
Ogbin maintained that about 18,250 day old chicks had been distributed to 37 incubatees, emerging farmers, within the last one year that the programme implementation kick-started in Cross River State, adding that the project intervention have seen the construction of 5.7km rural road.
He said, “From the 100 communities, 10 each from 10 local government areas that have been penciled down to benefit from the project, we are presently visible in 52 communities.
“To get it right, we look at the existing culture and structures in the community before intervention. These rural structures are the ones that drives the implementation of the project.
“We are happy with the successes so far recorded, even though we are not where we ought to be because we lost a year in the project implementation in Cross River.”
Ogbin averred that project sustainability has been worked out by the initiators of the project to bring succour to the rural dwellers who are major benefiaries of the project.
He stated further, “It is a 12-year project with six years financing gap. While IFAD will pull out after six years, the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, will handle the remaining, with the role of the private sector that have been factored in.”
