The Katsina State Government has pledged to bring back extension training and capacity building for both farmers and operators of irrigation activities in the state.

These set of people will be trained at the zonal, local government, and ward levels respectively so that they can effectively disseminate new ideas, new information, new techniques, new agro inputs, and new ways of doing things which will no doubt solve more than 50 percent of the problems farmers are facing.

The most important aspect of agriculture according to the newly appointed Managing Director of the State Irrigation Development Authority, Hon. Abdulkadir Mamman-Nasir is extension services.

He described the extension as knowledge of agricultural activities for the farmers to get it right and get more profitable.

Mamman-Nasir who was speaking on Tuesday in a press briefing held at the General Muhammadu Buhari Government House, Katsina State, maintained that the state government has hitherto been giving out inputs such as fertilizers, seedlings, and watering equipment among others to dry season farmers.

"So we will provide adequate water and adequate information on water usage so farmers do not end up losing their produce and their life savings.

“Government intends to introduce other means and systems of getting water from the ground by sinking tube wells with tube wells sinking equipment for farmers as practiced before.

“We will also teach the farmers how to make their tube wells and how to repair them.

“And for the aspect of security. Insecurity itself is a product of food insecurity. When there is food security, insecurity will decline because people will be busy and will not have time to commit crimes.

"We are going to even extend our hands of friendship to people in the forest. Let them come back and become irrigation farmers so that all can live in harmony. We want to use irrigation to touch the lives of all and sundry in Katsina State and beyond.

“This Authority was created in November last year. It’s curved out of the activities of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources to take care of all irrigation activities in the state including the management and supervision of all water bodies and infrastructure related to irrigation across the state.

“It’s a well-known fact, that irrigation is a safer component of agricultural production, bearing in mind that during irrigation, you have the ability and capacity to control input utilisation. You can determine what happens to a very large extent without prejudice to the fact that God in his wisdom is the sole giver and nourisher of all lives.

“But God has given man the capacity and ability to appropriate scarce resources to achieve maximum objectives. So involving with irrigation activities in agriculture is about the surest way of ensuring food security, food availability, and good crop yield and management.

“I want to inform the general public that, the authority is going to first, meet with all operators and other stakeholders in the irrigation circle from next week.

“After that, traditional and religious institutions as well as irrigation farmers and the state branch of water users associations including women and youth cooperative associations among other key stakeholders,” he explained.

Culled from Channels TV