Fevick Resources, Taraba Govt To Empower Over 1,000 Women, Youths Through Rice Farming

Over 1,000 women and youths would be empowered by in a wet season rice planting project being implemented by Fevick Resources Ltd.

The project will be a sustainable rice transformational program which empowers clusters of women and youth farming together on a contiguous arable farmland to produce high quality and quantity of rice paddy for processing during the wet season farming.

The new rice planting initiative will create employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for 1,000 women and youths in the pilot phase.

They will produce high quality and quantity of paddy rice for processors to get high milling out-turn which will increase the profit margin of the women and youths.

Samuel Oluwafemi Adeshina, Project Coordinator, Fevick Resources told journalists in Abuja that the new wet season rice farming project will link farmers to new technologies and high yield seedlings.

According to Adeshina “We can derive six to seven metric tonnes of rice per hectares by introducing new varieties of very high yielding seedlings.”

This variety of rice seedlings, he said, will be tested to determine the ruggedness, virility and flood resistance of the variety that was developed to see how this variant of rice will survive in submerged areas during serious flood and ozone depletion.

Taraba State is hosting the pilot programme and the farmers under Fevick Resource supervision will have three layers of credit open to them.

There is the direct fertilizer aspect which will give the farmers NPK and Urea, there is also the the seeds variety Faro 66 and 67, the third part of the credit to the farmers is the Crop Protection Product which is the aspect that covers labour and services.

This according to Adeshina, will cover land preparation, harvesting, threshing and aggregation.

He said, “The project will create strong and effective linkages to quality agro-inputs and services including mechanization, credits, insurance, technology, information, and market for rural farmers to improve their livelihoods and build sustainable agriculture.

“Participants will be selected and clustered as a registered geo-cooperative having its own corporate governance structure on contiguous farmland.

“They will be ultimately responsible for supervising, managing their respective plots as well as working together as a geo-cooperative.”

He added that Agriprenuers and farming communities will be trained on improved rice growing techniques with emphasis on selection of rice seeds varieties, optimal water usage, fertilization, plant protection and post-harvesting.

Furthermore, the training will cover development of leadership, business, entrepreneurial and technical skills covering farm machineries and irrigation.