NIRSAL To Enrol 8 Million Nigerian Farmers Into Agro Geo-Coopratives

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL PLC) has said that it will enroll 8 million farmers across the country into its Agro Geo-Coopratives, while calling on smallholder farmers, farmer leaders and aggregators to take advantage of the initiative.

NIRSAL disclosed on Wednesday in a statement that it had embarked on a “project of creating 16 thousand Agro geo- cooperatives on 4 million hectares of farmland and enrolling 8 million farmers across Nigeria.”

According to the bank, the initiative is targeted at producing about 12 million metric tonnes of Grain Product Equivalent every year.

The non-bank financial institution  further disclosed that it ” expects that under the this arrangement, farmers will be able to have access to structured finance, quality input, extension, monitoring, weather information, aggregate services and access to markets.”
 

NIRSAL however said it had drafted a structure that would allow farmers joined the initiative based on the lands they posses, adding that the initiative would allow them benefit from a large structured farming project, while they retain their original farmlands.  

“The bigger and more contiguous an Agricultural Geo-Cooperative is, the faster and easier for it to have access to structured finance, quality and structured markets through NIRSAL’s facilitation,” the institution added.

Meanwhile, NIRSAL said in the statement that it had trained and primed its project monitoring, reporting and remediation officers across the 36 states to assist farmers, leaders, aggregators and other interested participants along achieving the stated criteria for pre-qualification..

According to NIRSAL, the criteria include: know your farm’s geographic coordinates and size, know your farmland neighbours (KYN), know your customers (KYC), Elect Agro geo cooperatives leaders, including president, vice president/ secretary and director of finance.

The bank also listed among the prey requirements that the farmers would download or collect online or offline forms as the case may be in order to get the NIRSAL Agro Geo-Cooperatives Enrollment Forms, stressing that it would be issued free.

All completed offline forms should be submitted to NIRSAL offices across the country, while online forms would be enrolled and submitted on www,nirsal.com, the statement disclosed.

NIRSAL is a non- bank financial institution established by the Central Bank of Nigeria to facilitate agri-businesses in the country.