The Kano State Agro-Pastoral Development Project (KSADP) has announced that more than 477,284 smallholder farmers across the state’s 44 local government areas have benefited from its crop intervention programme executed by the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA). The Project Coordinator, Abdulrasheed Kofar-Mata, disclosed this during a field tour in Kano, noting that the programme has contributed to agricultural transformation while improving food and nutrition security.
He said the intervention helped the project achieve its goal of improving the income and livelihood of the most vulnerable farmers in Kano. Kofar-Mata explained that the five-year initiative was funded by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the Lives and Livelihoods Fund (LLF), and the Kano State Government. According to him, the initiative was designed to reduce poverty and enhance food sufficiency among vulnerable households.
He stated that SAA, the technical partner implementing the crop component, had surpassed expectations through activities that boosted productivity, strengthened seed systems, reduced post-harvest losses, expanded market opportunities, and promoted climate-smart agriculture. Kofar-Mata noted that thousands of smallholder farmers across the state had seen significant increases in income due to the project’s interventions.
He added that the project made heavy investments in mechanisation, with more support underway. Items already delivered include 540 planters, 401 fertiliser applicators, 1,600 climate-smart pumps, 471 threshers, 210 hermetic drums and 7,500 PICS bags. Additional tools in the pipeline include 7,000 vegetable returnable crates, 1,000 mobile flour mills, three units of 10MT inert silos, 397 trained rice parboiling groups benefiting more than 1,000 women, 40 power tillers, 97 rice transplanters, 18 tractors and 20 combine harvesters.
Kofar-Mata also listed 40 tractor-driven threshers, 35 rice reapers, nine modular rice mills, 80 trained fabricators empowered, and 250 trained machine operators. He revealed further plans for mechanisation through state savings for mass deployment. These include 80 tractors, 80 trailers, 80 ploughs, 80 ridgers, 80 harrows, 28 combine harvesters, 1,900 solar pumps, 95 planters, 20 walk-behind transplanters, and 50 manual and 20 motorised transplanters.
Other items include 6,000 seedling trays, 25 boom sprayers, 120 rechargeable sprayers, 220 multi-crop threshers, 107 groundnut oil extractors, 60 combine seed drills, 43 combine seed drills with sprayers, 10 modular rice mills and 98 power tillers. He said the equipment would boost productivity, reduce manual labour and speed up the use of modern farming practices among smallholder farmers.
Kofar-Mata added that deploying solar pumps under the initiative would drastically reduce production costs for dry season farmers while increasing yields and profitability. Also speaking, State Project Coordinator Ibrahim Garba Muhammad described KSADP as a multi-faceted programme. He stated that the equipment displayed represented only a small portion of the intervention, noting that once deployed along with those stored in warehouses, mechanisation in the state would scale up further.
A beneficiary, Umar Hassan from Minjibir Local Government Area, praised the programme, saying the support would greatly improve his farming activities and productivity.
