Synergos Nigeria, an NGO, says it has so far trained 40 enumerators and other individuals on data collection for cashew farmers, in partnership with the Kogi Government.
Mr Victor Adejoh, Head, State Partnership for Agriculture (SPA) disclosed this in Lokoja on Friday, on the sideline of a three-day training of enumerators by the NGO with participants drawn from Kogi Agricultural Development Project (ADP) staff and youth volunteers.
He said the training was in response to the state government request for development of solutions to farmers’ data inconsistency.
Synergos is a global non-profit, governmental organisation charged with the responsibility of deepening trust and collaboration to solve complex problems such as poverty and create opportunities among others.
Adejoh said the state government, through the Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr Kehinde Oloruntoba, had solicited the cooperation of the Implementing Partner to build capacity of farmers “Constructive collaboration and Trust building.”
According to him, the programme will also involve other stakeholders to ensure its success.
Adejoh said the 40 enumerators were drawn from high and low cashew producing communities from six local government areas of Kogi to ensure that data to be collected were reliable.
The head of SPA said the efforts were also to ensure the date were accessible to all cashew producing communities, investors and market at all times in the state.
Also speaking, Philip Obosi, Project Coordinator, SPA-Technoserve said, “we are training the enumerators to go into the producing communities where cashew is produced in huge quantities.
“They are expected to interview farmers and get information on the various factors of production; ranging from access to finance, agronomic, gender inclusiveness and climate issues among others.
“This is necessary so that we can combine these information and develop data base system that government and private organisations will use to develop implementable framework for the agriculture sector in the state,“ he said.
Obosi said that SPA project was initiated and implemented by Synergos in partnership with Technoserve as a consulting partner.
According to him, the project is to re-strategise and re-orientate key agricultural stakeholders on the actual needs of the sector in the state and identify proper way of implementing need interventions in agricultural sector.
The project he said was also aimed to improve the livelihood of farmers, ensure gender inclusiveness, agricultural mechanisation, input supply and other key areas in agriculture among other interventions.
