The Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, says eight Local Government Areas in Cross River will benefit from its sustainable cocoa and oil palm production project.
The five year project, funded by the Global Environmental Facilities, GEF, through FAO, covers Akpabuyo, Odukpani, Akamkpa, Biase, Ogoja, Boki, Ikom and Etung Local Government Areas. Prof. Adebayo Shittu, the Chief Technical Adviser for the FAO-GEF initiative, said in Calabar on Wednesday that the project had Cross River and Ondo State as main beneficiaries.
At a training programme for enumerators on baseline tools for agroecology performance enumeration, Shittu said that the project was aimed at promoting integrated landscape management and sustainable food system in the Niger Delta region. The technical adviser said that all the eight local government areas would benefit from the second, third and fourth components of the initiative.
“These three components of the project are for sustainable food system, restoration of degraded landscape, and monitoring and evaluation,” he said. Shittu further said that the first component which aimed to develop integrated landscape management, would target Akamkpa and Boki Local Government Areas.
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“These are the core cocoa and oil palm producing areas in the state with massive forest reserve. We need to know the current situation of the farmers and their key challenges. We need deeper understanding of the issues to make evidence-based decisions. Our data collection will be a mobile phone based survey called ‘kobo collect’ which does not necessarily require the internet except during data upload.
“The intervention will among others support small holder farmers to acquire title to land. This will enable them to access credits. They will also help in the establishment of community and private sector led nurseries, and even extension services,” he said.
He stated that the survey would be household-based with qualitative data gathering procedures to be undertaken by enumerators domiciled within the communities.
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