Agricultural Production

The training will entail (i) hands-on commercial training in crop production, procurement of farm inputs, appropriate use of the inputs including seed, fertilizer, pesticide and simple motorized farm equipment and machinery and contract farming etc., in order to produce commodities efficiently, and (ii) the use of modern farming practices so that the produced commodities could generate profit as expected. The priority of agro-food chains were identified from pilot initiatives under a completed small grant from IFAD which demonstrated potential for commercialization based on cost to benefit analysis. The cost benefit ratio of the 10 commodities is at least 1:1.25. The target crops are: leafy vegetables (seed and leaf production enterprises), soybean/cowpea (soybean/cowpea seed production enterprises), maize (maize seed and grain production), plantain (sucker multiplication and fruit production enterprises), mango fruit production, cassava (cassava stem, and cassava tuber production), rice (seed and paddy production, equipment fabrication enterprise including weeders, threshers), moringa (leaf and seed production), fish (fingerlings and cat-fish production).