Zowasel Commissions Crop Centre in Biase To Develop Oil Palm, Cocoa Value Chains
Zowasel has announced the launch of a new remote Crop Center infrastructure in Adim community, Biase LGA, Cross River state, in the Niger-delta region of Nigeria, to empower and strengthen smallholder farmers in the oil palm and cocoa value chain.
The crop center will help to connect several hundreds of smallholder farmers across the host and neighboring communities to the Zowasel platform, provide access to free training on Global Agricultural Practice (GAP), Sustainability, and free Agronomy Services to improve farmers’ cultivation practices, boost yield, and create access to premium markets to enable farmers to prevent post-harvest losses, increase their income and improve quality of life.
Adim is a small farming community surrounded by several villages primarily engaged in small-scale farming, with an estimated 1,000 smallholder farmers indulging in crop production and cultivating various types of crops including oil palm, cocoa, cassava, and rice.
According to Zowasel’s Head of Agronomy, Agbo Friday: “Among many challenges faced by smallholder farmers is the poor crop production quality due to knowledge barriers, scarcity of quality farm inputs, lack of access to agronomic training, and ready markets to sell their crops at good prices to fight poverty and be self-sufficient.”
The new Crop Center is strategically positioned in Adim community to serve smallholder farmers as a one-stop shop for agricultural cultivation. The remote infrastructure would enable Zowasel to support farmers across the communities with access to quality farm inputs, free agronomic training, and premium buyers to sell their crops.
On the ground to support smallholder farmers across the host and neighboring communities is Experience Otu, a native of the Adim community and an oil palm farmer himself. Experience is the Zowasel Trustee selected to manage the day-to-day operations of the Crop Center.
Speaking on the Crop Centre, the Clan’s Village Head of Adim Community, Chief Etim said, “As farmers, we are faced with many challenges on our farms, especially access to market to sell our crops but today, we are grateful that Zowasel has established a crop center here in our community to enable us to connect with buyers and increase our income. Unlike other companies or projects that come and go, we believe Zowasel has come to stay, it has established a Crop Centre here and even employs people from our community to drive its operations.”
For ease of operation, Zowasel would be working closely with the farmer’s cooperatives/associations and also putting the individual farmers into clusters across the regions to better understand their needs and create solutions that improve their quality of life.
See more photos from the event here.
