By EZEKIEL DONTINNA
PLATEAU State Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) Project, has launched its Smart Agriculture Transfer Knowledge Demonstration Farm in Vom, Jos-South Local Government Area as part of its components tagged; “Greening The Environment, Saving Lives”
This is aimed at having a strong integrated climate resilient landscape management.
The State ACReSAL Project Coordinator, Mr. Gabriel Gowon Gonkol, who led the Management Team to the site, thanked the Executive Governor of Plateau State, Barr. Caleb Mutfwang, for creating an enabling environment through the Ministry of Agriculture for them to have the plot of land.
He said, “At least, with what is on ground now, ACReSAL seems to be achieving its mandate or ACReSAL slogan which is to green the environment. It is interesting to have a demonstration plot like this and the essence of having this is not just for having the fruits that we are obtaining from this farm. No! But it is for technology.
“Green House is a new technology that the global world is running after. And so, having established and achieved this so far, there is now a tendency for us to deploy the technology to farmers which I know my technical officers, in collaboration with Farm Manager, have done because they have trained the farmers. It is technology that uses a little water”, he highlighted.
Gonkol however, thanked the contractor and the service provider for carrying out the task according to specifications. “In fact, the Farmer Manager said, the reaping of these crops is twice in a week which is very interesting. So, the green house has so many benefits apart from resistance to diseases,” he stated.
On his part, the State ACReSAL Natural Resource Officer, Mr. Nanbal Hassan Kumswan, said, “For now, it is a demonstration farm to be able to transfer knowledge in modern farming techniques known as a smart agriculture whereby the green house uses Drip System and everything is controlled-the sunlight, wind and diseases are controlled.
“With the limited time of eight to ten weeks, you will have your harvest and it can go on as long as three months and can be harvested twice in a week. So, with this, we expect that farmers should embrace this technology and it will increase food yield and security.
“Now, if these ones are able to show enough courage and will to embrace it, we are thinking of improving from this green house to be able to start another one for community, thereby, empowering them before we can handover to them because they need to understand it before we open a big field for them”, he explained.
Meanwhile, the Service Provider for the Project, Friday Bako, said, it was a new farming system using technology to stabilise the ecosystem and environment. He explained that “For this farm, we have a contractual agreement with ACReSAL to build a Green House (25/25m size), solar power motorised borehole and the farm house.
“So, here is a green house and we have planted one thousand (1,000) seedlings of the improved seedless cucumber. If you look out there, you will see a metal station of 200 watts/8 solar panel and an automatic ground force solar pump. This means that you do not need to use electricity at all times, If the sun comes out, you get water”, he disclosed.
