By Rauf Oyewole
The Kairos Initiative, a Bauchi based non-profit organisation has trained selected women in Birshin Gandu, a suburb of Bauchi metropolis on backyard sack farming to produce nutritional food.
The organisation also launched a 90-page book titled “ABC of backyard farming”. According to the NGO, nutritional agricultural produce does not necessarily have to be planted at far distance locations.
Speaking at the closing-out of its programme, Dr. Moji Iheme, the Team Lead of Kairos, explained that the project commenced six months ago where women were trained how to nurture plants like carrots, cucumber, pepper, tomato, Irish potato, cabbage among others in their backyard sacks.
“The programme was aimed to improve the care level of family nutrition, and improve the general nutrition of the family, and empower women. Teach them that within their household, they can grow vegetables, they can grow anything.
“In the course of this project, we realised that anything is possible. Anything can grow in our backyard, or in a sack. So, we started the project, of course, from there. Development Exchange Centre (DEC), came in, they gave us capacity building, changed our organisation. We became more structured, more focused.
“We started with training of 45 women, when we came, the chiefs gave us full cooperation. Everything we asked for, we got. Before we came, we went to the BSADP, they gave us every cooperation.
Also, the State Commissioner of Agriculture, Dr Aliyu Gital, who was represented by Abubakar Korau Garba, Deputy Director, Land Management,assured the NGO of government readiness to give an enabling environment for such programmes that are people driven.
"The Ministry is always ready to give support by making seedlings and other inputs available for such programmes anywhere in the State. Governor Bala Mohammed has approved the training of 1000 youths and women on modern agric extension services in order to boost agricultural production in the State,” he said.
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