GREENHOUSE CUCUMBERS: ACRESAL’S AG-TECH DEMONSTRATIONS IN PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

‘I thank God for the project that they brought into this community. It has really made so many women, so many graduates who are jobless, to be active,’ Bola Lawani enthused. A former researcher at the National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI) in Vom township in the Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State, Nigeria and now a member of the Dop Community’s Farmers Multi-Purpose Co-operative Society (DCFMPCS), she was convinced that the demonstration greenhouse with solar-powered borehole and drip irrigation system could have far-reaching benefits for their local community, for Plateau State and indeed for Nigeria. The 35 men and 40 women who were part of the demonstration pilot had harvested around 230 kgs of seedless cucumbers in just a week, and sold them for a profit of around 110,000 Naira (~USD 73) as at 2024

PLANTING THE SEEDS

Garba Gowon Gonkol, Plateau State Project Coordinator of the World Bank supported Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) Project of the Government of Nigeria, noted that although his team at the Plateau State Project Management Unit (SPMU) had conceived the idea in 2021 they only managed to get it operational in late 2023. The major challenges were to get land and organize the farmers.

Starting in December 2021, Nanbal Hassan, Acting Natural Resource Officer, ACReSAL Plateau SPMU recalled that while they had chosen Vom due to its favourable weather and proximity to the NVRI, they had to appeal to the Plateau State Ministry of Agriculture for land. Nearly two years later, they were ready: They had been granted four plots of land on lease, and ACReSAL’s focal NGO in Plateau State had managed to mobilize sufficient farmers.

Friday Bako, a service provider, was contracted in September 2023 to construct a 25 x 25 metre greenhouse, drill a borehole, install a pump powered by one hundred 200-watt solar panels, and plant 1000 seeds of pest-and disease-resistant hybrid seedless cucumbers.

REAPING THE BENEFITS

Ten weeks later, the first harvest was ready, and thereafter, twice a week, the seventy-five farmers continued to harvest. Offtakers lined up. They sold as fast as they harvested, and at a good price. Jerry Olufo, Chairman of the DCFMPCS, states proudly, “What we grow here are seedless, they are succulent, they are very fresh, and this is the quality that is demanded and is not there in most of our supermarkets.”

Dr. Grace Edward Gyang, Chairlady of the DCFMPCS sees in this pilot the potential to empower women, noting that there is money to be made in farming and that many women dropped out of farming in the previous year because they could not afford fertilizer, and other inputs. “So [for this pilot] we mobilized younger women, we have graduates in our group, we have women direct agriculture, we have agronomist in our midst, we have mid to aged women that are just farming”, she declares with pride, “All the women we have in our group are women that have passion.”

Apart from the financial benefit, stakeholders also see the potential in reducing the sheer drudgery of traditional farming.

Isifanous Donung, Secretary, DFMPCS, notes: “When I was growing up, source of livelihood was farming. And it is through this farming that some of us were able to go to school. We have never had any assets of mechanized form of agriculture, so most of the things were done manually.”

Recalling the sheer labour and risk of the traditional cultivation she had been doing since the age of 5 with her parents, Janet Pwajok, was particularly fascinated by the drip-irrigation system: “Many women were not into agriculture because of the way the agricultural farming system were done in the past. When they mounted this gadget here, like the piping, you know, where you can just ON water from the tank and water would just go round underneath the plants, it makes it easier, and that really gave women the courage to see that agriculture can be done with ease.”

VISIONING THE FUTURE

These are early days yet, but still the stakeholders can see greater benefits.

Janet feels that widening the operation to include more women and farmers from neighouring areas (who have been coming ‘begging’ to be allowed to join), as well as growing crops like cabbage, green pepper, and strawberries, can reduce unemployment, theft and crime in society.

Dr. Grace has, perhaps, the widest vision: ‘I feel this project, if every woman, we are almost 50, and every woman will have a small farm, you know, hunger is conquered from feeding smaller parts of the family before going higher. If a woman that has 5 children, with the funds she has she can feed her children, and another one, that 50, you discover that in fact we wipe out hunger … There is a common adage that says, “A hungry man is an angry man”. So where there is hunger, there is conflict.’

Although Plateau SPMU is constructing more greenhouses across the state, spreading the innovation and realizing its potential benefits across Plateau State and Nigeria, will depend not only on ACReSAL but on the enabling environment created by the State and Federal Governments of Nigeria. During the remaining project period (till 2028), however, ACResAL can guide participating states to create the supportive policy and operational measures necessary for effective scaling up.