No fewer than 277 rice farmers benefited from agricultural apparatus under the anchor borrower programme in Dutsi Local Government Area in Katsina State.
Malam Dahiru Maidoki, the Chairman of the Rice Farmers Association, disclosed this to the News men in Dutsi on Tuesday. Maidoki said the farmers were carefully selected and registered from the 10 wards for wider coverage.
He said each farmer received two bags of fertiliser, two litres of herbicides, one bag of organic fertiliser, one bag of improved rice seedlings, a sprayer and water pumping machine valued at N275, 000.
He said 61 of the beneficiaries were women, adding “we have since conducted a farmland survey of each of the beneficiary.’’
He called on the beneficiaries to make judicious use of the implements as utilisation was being monitored, adding that any act of diversion or sabotage would not be tolerated.
Maidoki commended the Federal Government for introducing the programme, saying it would reduce poverty, unemployment and redundancy.
He said the repayment period of the loan was 12 months after which the farmers were expected to repay the monetary equivalent of what they had collected in bags of the commodities. It was reported, that 396 farmers in Dutsi Local Government Area had so far benefited in the first phase of the anchor borrower programme.
