By Gabriel Ewepu – Abuja

As the world grapples with climate change, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency and International Fund for Agricultural Development-Value Chain Development Programme,  IFAD-VCDP, Thursday, signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, to boost farmers’ food production along with accurate weather forecasts.

The signing was done at the headquarters of NiMet, where the Director-General, NiMet, Prof Mansur Matazu, signed on behalf of NiMet, while the National Programme Coordinator, NPC, Garba Bala, signed on behalf of IFAD-VCDP.

It was made known by Bala who led the IFAD-VCDP delegation to NiMet that nine States with 135, 000 farmers as direct beneficiaries and over 1 million farmers as indirect beneficiaries are currently under the programme, which will end by 2023. He added that these farmers are the poorest of farmers who own below one hectare of the farm.

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He further stated that the MoU will go a long way to change the way farming is done in the country following weather forecasts that will accompany it as farmers will receive technical assistance from NiMet on climate information.

He said: “With regards to the time frame of activities we are looking at the commencement of this activity now to the end of the programe, and these are donor funded programmes that have a timeline, and 2023 is the closing year of this programme.

“But we are envisaging an extension for the programme with the discussion we are having with IFAD, and after extension of the programme by another two years, and we will still come back for the extension of this Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with NiMet.

“VCDP is targeting the poor of the poorest farmers, farmers that are farming below one hectare, and you can imagine the kind of farmers we are dealing with.

He also disclosed that, “From the commencement from the programme five years ago the programme has succeeded in weaning off greater number of farmers because that is the way we do it, after two years is like we are graduating, wean them off from the grants they are benefiting, and inputs they are getting and then you bring in another set of farmers.

“Today, we have been able to target about 135, 000 farmers directly, and indirectly we are dealing with over 1 million farmers and by the time we are progressing before the end of this part of the programme we are talking about 3 million farmers.”

He added that, “We are having the programme in nine States already, but quiet a number of States because of the successes recorded in since we started with six old state and last year three new states joined. Because of the successes recorded in the six old states a lot of state governments now want to join.”

However, the VCDP boss said, “But the procedure if joining is very cumbersome and that is why we are only having nine states for now.”

In responding, the Director General, NiMet, Prof Mansur Matazu, made it known that the process that led to the eventual signing of the MoU took three years, and acknowledged that there is relationship between weather and agriculture since time in memorial.

However, Matazu mentioned that the service of the agency has been lopsided despite the great number of farmers and agricultural activities in the country, but it has a component called Climate Smart Agriculture, and assured that the agency takes agriculture seriously as they do not wait for MoU signing to start their activities, because it is part of their mandate.

He said: “Last week the implementation of last survey, we have been using local languages. Our documents also have been translated into the three major Nigerian languages.

“In this what we will do is not to approach the community directly. IFAD-VCDP has been dealing with the people there because you have your extension agents, there are climate change agents too, and extension workers do have excellent communications skill, and when they have the package they dramatise much more than us being scientists in the field.

“So, one of the flexibilities is that we normally conduct training for trainers by holding workshops by directly dealing with the user, lead farmer and extension officers with this they are going to translate it in the languages and some of us do dramatise some of this.

“We have an app we developed in 2017 and the app is in Hausa Language for better understanding for farmers.”

On boosting confidence of farmers on weather reports they will be receiving from the agency, he said, “Weather is dynamic, the atmosphere is always in motion either we have general or low circulation.

“But we have the technical instrumentation to monitor weather and climate in all ramifications. The performance of our forecast is 90 per cent, and for best weather you get decision by 60 per cent that is a good forecast, but in our case we are always getting to a hundred, and we also do follow up with updates.”

He also said that, “We are going to provide update for this year’s seasonal planning we released in February, and we are also giving alerts at times when we see certain signs of an extreme event. We issued flood alert recently, we have also issued in the last seven weeks heat wave alert to the Nigerian public.

“Farmers have been testifying for the advantage they have gotten for using our forecast. We are also using technology so that if we notice any sudden changes we can easily alert the farmers.

“Under this MoU if time permits we will develop an app for your farmers and then we provide them a forecast to alert farmers.”

Vanguard News Nigeria