'Bean feast' for 6m Nigerians
11 November 2010

Infant mortality rates should improve across three Nigerian states as a result of improved food security from RIU-supported work on legumes.

RIU Nigeria has achieved major successes promoting improved varieties of dual purpose cowpea and rust-resistant soybean during the 2010 cropping season. Dual-purpose refers to high-yielding and medium maturing legumes for human food and leafy stems, which after harvest, are used as hay for livestock feed.

RIU Nigeria worked with the Institute for Agricultural Research to identify the right legume varieties for the respective agro-ecological zones (AEZs). Two private sector seed companies (Premier Seed Nig Ltd, and Seed Project) supplied the required seed varieties.

RIU Nigeria paid for repackaging and labelling the seeds into 2 kilogram tamper-proof bags to ensure farmers get the seeds without adulteration by middlemen.

This is a major breakthrough for farmers in these states who lack effective links to sources of certified improved seed varieties, especially the varieties that will ensure food security for their households and livestock during the dry season.

Grace Jokthan, of RIU Nigeria said:

"We reached nearly 40,000 groups of rural farmers in KadunaKano and Cross River states. We estimate that, in total, these groups will reach about 1 million farming households or some 6 million people. These families can expect to be food secure, particularly in terms of improved protein intake.

Low protein intake in the country has been a major cause of maternal and infant malnutrition, which are linked to high rates of mortality."

October and November 2010 will see a bumper harvest arising from the use of improved high-yielding cowpea varieties. These high yields are also good news for the post-harvest work, encouraging solarisation and triple bagging in which RIU Nigeria is also engaged.

The 2009 pilots of solarisation and triple bagging (hermetic) method of cowpea storage, increased incomes for cowpea farmers who used this storage technique. As this method avoids the need to use storage chemicals, there were also few reports of poisoning arising from consumption of contaminated cowpeas. So, demand is also high for the triple bags. This will add to the estimated 600,000 farmers who adopted this technology last season.

The programme has continued to link the cowpea farmers, traders and bag distributors to Lela Agro Nig Ltd, the company producing the bags.

Grace Jokthan said:

"We could not have achieved this level of impact at scale without facilitating multi-agency collaborations. By working hard and building trust we have been able to achieve a great deal in a very small space of time.

We call our groups innovation platforms – and we can really see how these platforms can be the foundation for future collaboration. We now have our sights on a programme targeting cowpea pest management in Kano State in collaboration with the local government in Garki and the state ADP.

This will mean we have worked on improved seeds, dual use varieties, improved production and post-harvest storage and the cumulative effect should be even more impressive production and reduced post-harvest losses. Food security should improve considerably."

Figures for 2010 Cowpea/Soybean Value Chain Innovation Platform - impact:

Cowpea	Kano State	450,000 farmers
Soybean	Kaduna State	545,000 farmers
Soybean/cowpea	Cross River State	2880 farmers (widows)