By Blessing Bature-Akpakpan, Abuja

The FCT Agricultural Development Project (ADP) in partnership with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has organised a three-day training program on Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment & Promotion (SHEP) an approach which realizes “Market-Oriented Agriculture” and converts farmers mind from “grow and sell” to “grow to sell”.

The Director FCT-ADP, Mr Ajaefobi Innocent represented by Mr Ekele Simon Uda, Head Extension service and SHEP Team Leader said Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment & Promotion (SHEP) is an approach for smallholder horticultural farmers developed by JICA to encourage horticultural farmers to change a mind-set of “Grow and sell” to “Grow to sell”.

Uda, who stated this on Wednesday during the SHEP step-down training for the 2nd Batch of extension agents, Gwagwalada, Abuja that this program come up to train extension workers and women in agriculture agent FTC ADP with partnership with the Japan international cooperation agency since 2015 till date.

He said the Japanese with their wealth of expertise is out to address the problem of Horticultural crops like Ammalatus, pepper, tomatoes, Ugu Okro and the rest, they are highly perishable the moment you harvest them between one or two hours, deterioration will begin to set in and will not look flesh any longer so the Japanese has developed a model technology called Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment & Promotion (SHEP) to address this problem.

“The Federal Government of Nigeria observed that the pilot project had positive impact on the livelihood of the farmers as a result of increased income and hence requested the Japanese Government to extend the approach to 18 other states of Nigeria. In response to the request, JICA in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development launched a four-year technical cooperation project titled “Project on the Promotion of Market-oriented Agricultural Extension System for Livelihood Improvement in Nigeria.

“The goal is to customize the SHEP Approach to specific conditions of Nigeria and normalize the approach as an agricultural extension method in Nigeria. The project is to establish an implementation system for market-oriented extension service and expand SHEP Approach to 20 states, adding that the component of nutrition improvement is also included in the Project.

“As at January eight staff of Agricultural Development Project were appointed as Master Trainers and was trained, these Master Trainers are responsible for training extension agents, monitoring and coordinating the SHEP activities in the 6 area councils.

“The training included topics such as outline of the Project, sensitization of farmers, baseline survey, gender and family budget, market survey, crop selection, business plan making, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, and monitoring and evaluation, adding that the project plans to expand SHEP activities to other farmers in Nasarawa state and FCT, and build capacity of extension agents in Agricultural Development Program (ADP) in 18 other states to become SHEP Trainer,” he stated.

According to one of the trainees Ms. Patience Abimiku, Kwali area council said the training has improved her understanding of SHEP Approach and she look forward to contributing to capacity development of extension agents throughout.