Present administration impactful on farmers, citizens, says JASCO boss

Governor Mohammed Badaru Abubakar

The present administration in Jigawa state led by Governor Mohammed Badaru Abubakar has been described as very impact on the farmers and citizens in supply of inputs to farmers and stabilization of prices for the citizens. This view was expressed by the General Manager (GM) of JASCO Alhaji Hassan Idris Girbobo while speaking to Food Farm News in his office at Dutse recently.

Girbobo who opined that the last 16 months of had been impactful on the populace said the effective distribution channel of Jigawa Agricultural Supply Company Limited (JASCO) also contributed to the unprecedented success. 

Also, Food Farm News can authoritatively confirm Jigawa state as being able to ensure maximum agricultural inputs distribution to all her registered farmers at very subsidized prices even at the expense of the increasing foreign exchange (forex) between Naira and Dollar in the recent times just as inputs for about 180,000 hectares of cultivated land for rice and wheat has been done across the state with assurance of buying back according to.

Also the buyback mechanism in the area of food crops had tremendously impacted in the suppressing of the high prices the citizenry of the state would have been buying food stuff in the last few months as JASCO through the Governor’s support was able to release stored food in its warehouses across the local governments into the market at very affordable prices that put farmers’ interest of more production into consideration.

The JASCO GM, Hassan Girbobo who commended the effort of the Jigawa state government in the last one year and four months towards ensuring sustainable agricultural development and commercial food production for wealth and job creations with 450 extension workers from the local governments being deplored into ADP’s work at each political wards towards achieving best agronomic practices  pointed to Food Farm News that intensified food crops and livestock production cannot be better described than now with the governor  leveraging about two billion naira into achieving backward integration of less drudgery using modern tools with quality improved seeds, fertilizers and agro chemicals in four major crops including rice, wheat, sorghum and guinea corn.

According to him “let me tell you that this state has enjoyed unprecedented support in the area of inputs like improved seeds, agro chemicals and supply of modern simple tools that can reduce drudgery in planting, processing and packaging. Towards achieving this the Governor of Jigawa state, Alhaji Mohammadu Baduru Abubahar has recapitalized our company to the tune of two billion naira for the purchase of simple machine tools like planters, threshers, harvesters and milling machine at very affordable prices for processing of paddy rice into a milled rice for local and export consumption on one hand, and on the other hand purchase improved quality seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals to increased production per hectare”

Continuing, he said: “With the recapitalization, JASCO will go to the market to purchase when the prices of food items are and resell when prices are high to mitigate food scarcity.

 We have 81 ware houses across the state where we aggregated and store food stuff. At the time when food crops prices are higher like this time around, then we will also open our store to selling to farmers and the rest of the populace at affordable prices and thereby stabilizing prices that will not be high for the common man, and at the same time not too low so that farmers will not be affected in their selling thereby making them to lose interest in farming for another commercial business. Out of the two billion, one billion was used in the purchase of simple tools that will assist in commercial production across all the value chains right from the land preparation up to processing and marketing using simple of power tillers which is about N130,000.00, threshers from China and which we have been able to locally fabricate to lessen the prices for farmers, and the same time, we have harvesters as well small milling machines that mill rice and wheat at a cost of N250,000-N270,000 which a group of farmers or medium to purchase for the processing of their paddy into milled rice and it can also be used for wheat processing. Also in the areas of agro chemical, we have helped the farmers a lot.

Added he,”You will agree with me that adulteration of these items is very rampant in the country with many of them having no active ingredients to fight pest and diseases. But our effort has assisted the farmers in this area as we have customized about seven agro chemicals. Four of them are herbicide and the rest three are pesticide and this has restored assurance in what the farmers are buying and applying on their farms as they are getting value for their money as the nutrients in our land ecologies are not being destroyed”

Alhaji Girbobo responding to what makes this administration different from the others was governor’s passionate disposition to developing agriculture through inputs availability with modern machine technologies of putting agriculture at the front burner of the economy saying “different Government has different approaches, but the present administration appreciates the role inputs play towards the development of agriculture.

 On assumption of office, the Governor had asked for the briefing of all the departments and agencies in the Ministries. Our was presented with immediate response of full deployment of extension workers from all the local government to our ADP for stepping up the ratio of extension workers to farmers in the state for best agronomic practices and transfer of improved technologies.  

 This support according to GM has yielded tremendous impact on the life styles of farmers in the state as many of them are now buying cars and challenging motor cycles due to increase in production as result of buyback mechanism strategy of the government through JASCO that is making farmers to quickly return to farming when their produce must have been off taken.

Justifying the state government procurement of agricultural inputs with transparency and corruption-free, Alhaji Girbobo said that the price at which the inputs are procured were competitively cheap to what any private company would have loved to offer considering the profit margin adding that the company had initially given the job order of NPK and Urea fertilizers but the supplier could not complete delivery due to FOREX challenges, which thereby resulted to Governor’s directive to procuring them by ourselves.

“If you talk of transparency and procurement process, it cannot be better than now especially in this sector when all the procurement act was followed through advertisement and normal bidding by interested companies. Most of the companies will that we offer letters of supply of fertilizer could not meet the demand because of profit margin occasioned by FOREX which has gone up more than the agreement we had when the MOU was initially signed. At the end of the day, the Governor had to direct that JASCO should try and procure the fertilizer at the same price same in the MOU with these companies which we did using our agricultural contacts. At the end of the day we bought NPK at N3,600 and sold at N4,500 as against the market price of N9,000.00 without changing the initial dollar agreement of  1: N199,00-200 even when the rate shut up beyond expectation we still tried our effort to buy both NPK and Urea that will procure N6,000.00 at N4,500 just to ensure that farmers are well subsidized towards commercial production.

I have no doubt that Jigawa state would be food secured in the next two years with based on the pace of agricultural support the government is giving the state with many programme with encouragement also given to private company like Dangote to establish a rice farm and processing centers towards commercialization of the sector for wealth and job creation for the teeming population of the state.