Katsina Govt. Trains 722 Co-Opted Agric Staff

The Katsina State Government on Tuesday, flagged off a two-day capacity-building training of 722 Co-opted local government agric staff into the mainstream state agricultural extension services.

This is to give farmers across the state, solutions to their lingering problem of low productive output as linked to poor seed selection, wrong fertiliser application, declining soil fertility, pest and diseases attack, as well as marketing strategies for profitable returns.

The ceremony tagged: ‘Building The Future of Extension Service’, was put together by the State Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development in collaboration with the State Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (KTARDA).

While speaking during the ceremony held at the Katsina Local Government Service Commission, the State Governor, Malam Dikko Radda, said he believed the role of effective extension service delivery in agricultural development, cannot be overemphasised since it provides knowledge and information that will enable farmers to understand and make decision about a particular innovation.

The governor further described extension service as a game changer for any agricultural development, adding that, getting farmers educated on how to operate or practice agriculture away from the traditional way of practising to a bid model practice is very crucial.

He explained that the participants were drawn from across the 34 LGAs of the state, with at least two participants carefully selected from each of the 361 political wards across the state.

“In this process, we have decided to partner with reputable consultants from academia to provide us with much-needed support and training for our local government agric-based staff as an immediate and very important measure to bridge the deficit.

“When we came on board, we met only 72 extension agents in the state, almost all of them are at the age of retirement from the service. This is in addition to other policy proposals being required by my Government to promote agricultural activities in the state”, he explained.

He pledged to procure motorcycles for the Ministry of Agriculture to distribute to all the 722 trainers, to enable them to facilitate efficient service delivery and all other equipment they needed, advising them to listen attentively to take the training down to farmers across the state.

Earlier in his address, the State Commissioner, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, Professor Ahmed Bakori, described agriculture as one of the priority sectors the present state administration promised to transform.

This he said, is because the Katsina State population is agrarian, stating that the agricultural potential of the state, is properly visited and will surely serve to provide the right atmosphere for the realisation of food and a socially secured society.

“It becomes imperative therefore to resuscitate the state agricultural extension service delivery. This training therefore seeks to boost the state’s agricultural productivity capacity and migrate from subsistence agriculture characterising the state to a more productive agricultural production for export.

“As a stepping move to consolidate our mission, we have decided to vigorously train and co-opted the local government agric-based staff to the mainstream state agricultural extension services.

“This means, giving our farmers across the state right at their doorstep access to solutions to their lingering problem of low productive output as linked to poor seed selection, wrong fertilizer application, declining soil fertility, pest and diseases attacks as well as marketing strategies for profitable returns”, Bakori added.