Dr. Richard Okechukwu is the Project Coordinator of International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the British American Tobacco Nigeria Foundation (BATNF) on Cassava Project. In this interview with selected journalists, he spoke on the Cassava Project and the need for a sustained public-private sector initiative in driving the nation's agricultural revolution and the need for government to sustain policies that are pro-agriculture among other issues. Seyi Taiwo-Oguntuase was there.
How would you describe the partnership between IITA and BATNF so far?
It has been very complementary. First, at IITA, we are technical experts and we always interact with farmers. We always listen to their complaints about what they would love to do and what they would love to achieve. From our findings, one major thing they have always lacked is the resources to getting inputs that they require to implement the technical knowledge they have acquired from the different trainings we have given to them.
Understanding that the main challenge confronting smallholder farmers is lack of resources to transform their farming operations, BATN Foundation stepped in to fill this gap by providing unique opportunity for these smallholder farmers to have access to the right inputs that cover everything, from land preparation, planting materials, technical resource persons to be on ground, herbicides and fertilizers.
So, what is left is the actualization of these findings, and results that we have got so far have been positive. It is no longer business as usual.
As partners, IITA will ensure that every missing gap like marketing, forming of cooperatives, group dynamics, conflict resolution between crop farmers and livestock farmers and all those kinds of hiccups are all addressed.
For how long has this partnership on the distribution scheme been on?
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