The Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer, National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), Prince Paul Ikonne, has said the Integrated Farm Estate in Suduje, Katsina state would generate N1.7 billion in its first year of operation.
This is even as he said it would employ over 1,500 youths and women.
Ikonne, who stated this on Monday in Katsina at the commissioning of the first NALDA’s Integrated Farm Estate by President Muhammadu, explained that the estate was designed with complete production chain for food and livestock, an irrigation system so that farmers would have three production cycles in a year.
To guarantee continuity and sustainability, Ikonne said a management system has been put in place whereby Jaiz Bank would manage the entire facility with a team of NALDA’s professionals, adding that the entire farm has the capacity to generate over N1.7 billion in the first year.
Giving the description and overview of the integrated farm estate, he said: “It is established on a 100-hectare land donated by the Katsina state government.
“This farm is designed as cyclical, where every process is part of a value chain. It is divided into 80 hectares for crop production and 20 hectares for animal production, processing and packaging, with growing of feeds, which include recycling animal wastes as fertilizer for plants, and growing plants to feed the animals.
“The ecosystem is best appreciated with low cost, domestically fabricated machineries like the incubators, ovens, and battery cages which can be easily understood and adapted by the farming community.
“The Integrated Farm Estate comprises 40 poultry pens with a capacity of over 400,000 birds; fish ponds with a capacity of 200,000 fishes; cow and goat pens with a capacity of 500 animals; rabbit pens with a capacity of 3,000 rabbits and bee apiary with a capacity of 540 litres of honey per harvest.”
Other components of the farm estate, according to him, include “crop farming, packaging and processing zones as well as a school, clinic and a residential area, with 120 units of one- bedroom apartments so that some farmers and their families can live and work in the farm.”
He noted that with the farm’s poultry, fishery, rabbitry and bee keeping unit, about 95% of the nutritional requirement of the system is self-sustained through resource recycling.
He assured that the project would be replicated across the country to increase the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), reduce unemployment and ensure food security.
