President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, commissioned the first integrated farm estate established by the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) in Katsina State.
The project is targeted at improving food security, generating employment and improving revenue generation in the state.
The farm settlement is expected to generate about N1.7 billion revenue within its first year of operation, and would create direct jobs for 1.5 million youths and women in the state.
Established on a 100-hectare land, the estate is designed as cyclical, where every process is part of a value chain. It is divided into 80 hectares for crop production and 20 for animal production, processing and packaging, with growing of feeds, recycling of animal wastes for fertiliser and growing plants to feed the animals.
The estate also has a school, clinic and a residential area, with 120 units of one-bedroom apartments, so that farmers and their families can live and work in the farm.
Executive Secretary of NALDA, Paul Ikonne, at the commissioning of the farm estate, explained that the Integrated Farming System (IFS) was built to avoid waste, as the by-product of one system becomes the input for another.
According to him, with the farm’s poultry, fishery, rabbitry and bee keeping unit, about 95 per cent of the nutritional requirement of the system is self-sustained through resource recycling.
He mentioned that following the vision of the President to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, with focus on the most vulnerable members of the society and teeming youths, the integrated farm was deliberately designed to accommodate, empower and position new sets of 1,500 agro entrepreneurs every year.
Ikonne said: “We will take in new farmers every year (and farmers pass out and move on to become independent after being trained and making money). This will attract and keep young people busy in crop and livestock production all year round.”
The farm, according to him, will be managed by Jaiz Bank with their team of experts to generate N1.7 billion in the first year of operation, adding that when replicated across the country, it would increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), reduce unemployment and go a long way in achieving food security.
NALDA Integrated Farm Estate, Ikonne added, is designed with complete production chain for food and livestock, an irrigation system, so that farmers will have three production cycles in a year.
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