In Q3, PIND leveraged its relationships with oil palm Business Membership Organizations to onboard new agro-dealers and farm services providers who are interested in using the best management practices (BMP) model to reach more farmers in the region to stimulate their adoption of best management practices and quality oil palm seedlings.
The Foundation also engaged four new input companies and linked them to the trained farm service providers in their States who worked with them to conduct outreach to farmers.
Collectively, the agro-dealers and farm service providers reached 4,035 farmers across various locations in the region, which added to the 4,401 reached in previous quarters brings the total farmers outreach in 2020 to 8,436, a 74% of the 13,000 farmers targeted for the year.
Palm oil farmers have suffered low income from use of poor quality seedlings which has led to a high demand-supply gap in the sector. To continue ensuring quality and provision of improved seed for palm oil farmers, PIND has been building the capacity of private nursery operators and linking them to sprouted nut-producing companies to forge a steady supply chain for improved seeds to farmers.
By Q3, PIND trained 147 nursery operators and linked them to seed producers like PalmElit CIRAD, the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), and ALLISSEE Seed Company. This relationship has led to the purchase of 147,948 seedlings by 342 farmers in Akwa Ibom, Delta, Imo and Ondo States.
The Foundation conducted an effectiveness study on the BMP and access to improved technology interventions in the quarter, besides applying the new impact level multipliers derived from previous assessments to ascertain the impact on their performance of the participating farmers. Between Q1 and Q3:
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- 2,445 farmers adopted 815 improved harvesting technologies, at an average of 3 farmers per technology to harvest at least 3 hectares of land. This brings a combined income of 405,234,569 Naira for the adopting farmers as each farmer earns an average net income of 165,740 Naira
- 4,476 farmers that adopted best management practices (BMP) on their farms have experienced a combined net income of 2,005,812,581 Naira at an average net income per hectare of 144,715.89 Naira
- 150 palm oil processors adopted 10 improved processing equipment, at an average of 15 farmers per technology. Each processor earned an average net income of 1,014,533 Naira during peak period and 340,708 Naira during off-peak periods. In total, the processors earned a net attributable income of 203,286,067 Naira during peak and off-peak periods
- 2,445 farmers that own improved harvesting tools created 518 new jobs to assist in moving the tools and collating harvested fruit bunches. 8,436 BMP farmers created 1,687 jobs to maintain their farmlands while 150 processors who adopted the improved processing equipment created 12 new jobs and 3 jobs during the peak and off-peak seasons respectively to help in the palm oil processing activities. Together, the three interventions added 2,220 jobs to the sector in 2020.
PIND leveraged 1,542,864,291 Naira (surpassing the 2020 target of 100 million Naira) into the palm oil sector from equity investments by adopting farmers and processors across the nine States of the region for the procurement of improved seedlings, processing and processing technologies and maintenance of the BMP farms.
