Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support Project (APPEALS) on Wednesday said it has supported a total of 55, 864 farmers across the country.

 

Alhaji Mohammed Jobdi, the National Project Coordinator, APPEALS disclosed this during the progress monitoring meeting of its project implementation in Abuja with the World Bank Task Team on Wednesday.

 

Jobdi also disclosed that a total of 75 aggregation and cottage processing centres were being constructed across states.

 

He said the APPEALS was constructing about 80 kilometers of farm access roads as well and energy infrastructure linked to production and processing clusters.

 

According to Jobdi, the projects are visible when one interacts with the beneficiaries during visits to the participating states.

 

“The participating states have continued to make progress in the implementation of activities under the various components of the project,” he said.

 

Jobdi said the total number of Value Chain Investment Plans (VCIPs) being implemented across the states stood at 2,892.

 

He said that the projects had continued to contribute to the national food basket across the different value chains in the year under review.

 

This according to Jobdi, had come with significant increase in the output of the commodities when compared with the last mission’s figures.

 

“For instance, cocoa output increased by 129.01 per cent, while poultry egg, cassava, rice and poultry meat increased by 48.3 per cent, 24.7 per cent, 23.8 per cent, and 7.6 per cent respectively,” he said.

 

Jobdi said the number of farmers adopting improved technologies stood at 33,857 with females constituting about 36.0 per cent.

 

According to him, the project is linking farmers to markets through the facilitation of commercial partnerships resulting in a total of 303 business alliances.

 

Jobdi said this was with 145 off-takers already buying the farmers’ produce across the 11 value chains, with a transaction value worth N23.439 billion.