NIGERIA – The Flour Milling Association of Nigeria (FMAN) is planning to establish procurement centers across 13 states to off-take all wheat grain from up to 50,000 farmers in its 2022-2023 program.
The program will employ additional staff and warehouse capacities to enable the association to provide a market for wheat farmers who have doubled production areas from 200,000 hectares to 400,000 hectares this year.
The announcement was made by Dr. Aliyu Samaila, the National Programme Manager of the FMAN Wheat Development Project during the Kebbi during a wheat farmers’ green field day.
In a statement, Samaila said, “Specifically, we are establishing procurement centers across 13 Northern States to off-take all wheat grain from up to 50,000 farmers.”
He added that the program also entails providing farmers with training on good agronomic practice using the cultivation of 114-hectare demonstration farms across six northern states namely Adamawa, Borno, Gombe, Plateau, Taraba, and Yobe.
“To sustainably expand wheat production in the country, we must increase farmer yields, to make wheat competitive with rice and other dry season crops,’’ Samaila said.
He also said that the program envisioned expanding FMAN’s direct out-grower program with input loans to cover 4,300 farmers across 3,900 hectares in seven states – Kano, Jigawa, Sokoto, Kebbi, Kaduna, Bauchi, and Zamfara.
The association also plans to expand seed production with six certified seed companies, including both dry and wet season seed production, to produce sufficient seeds for 10,000 hectares next season.
Success footprints
According to Samaila, FMAN has purchased more than 50,000 tons of wheat over the past 5 years and signed MoU to buy any quantity of wheat available at an attractive price based on farmer yields.
In 2022 alone, the association purchased wheat directly from more than 4,000 farmers at 40 village-level Wheat Farmer Centres in 2022, according to Samaila.
He further noted that his association assisted 400 farmers with high-yielding seeds, fertilizers, and agrichemicals in 2019 and 700 farmers in 2020 in Kano, Jigawa, and Kebbi states.
He also said that the program further provided mechanized threshing services to over 1,500 farmers in 2022 on a cash-free basis in exchange for grain hence the high yields reflected.
The current program targets Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto, Bauchi, Adamawa, Gombe, Plateau, Taraba, Zamfara, and Yobe states.
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