By Aideloje Ojo
Minna
The yields of maize cultivated by farmers operating under the One Acre Fund in Niger state have improved to eight metric tons per hectare this year signifying bumper harvest and robust economic empowerment of the farmers.
The Programme lead of OneAcreFund, Emmanuel Bamigboye stated this during the flagoff off of Maize harvesting for the 2025 planting season in Garatu in Niger state.
According to him, “we are in one of our demonstration farms Garatu area of Niger state to start this year’s maize harvest. I am happy to inform you the OneAcreFund is celebrating our farmers in Niger state this year because they have been able to achieve bumper harvest with increase in yields from 3- 4 metric tons recorded last year to 7 – 8 metric tons of maize this year “.
He said that farmers are expected to roll out thousands of metric tons in maize harvest this year following the high yield of the crop as shown in the pre- harvest survey.
He explained that the organisation is targeting 10 to 11 metric tons per hectare maize yields for farmers in the country as obtainable Brazil and other nations.
Bamigboye said that OneAcreFund however has challenges with the farmers who set aside inputs meant for maize planting for other crops apparently because of high cost of agro- inputs in the market.
He said, ” For instance, we provide a number of fertilizers to the farmers at subsidised price but they do not use the inputs only for maize as advised, instead the divert them to cultivate other crops. This practice no doubt reduces the maize yields. However we hope to achieve our overall target of 10 to 11 metric tons yields per hectare harvest next year.
In a remark, the Permanent Secretary of the state Ministry of Agriculture, Matthew Ahmed expressed satisfaction with the performance of OneAcreFund in the state describing the organisation as dependable partner positively touching the lives of small scale farmers in the state
