NICA pays attention to the cooperative farming approach because of it’s understanding of the important role cooperatives play in developing rural areas. Not only does cooperatives enhance the bargaining power of producers and increase farm efficiency, they make important contribution to the farming society and civil society as a whole.
Our focus is on small –scale farmers in the rural areas. A cooperative structure allows members to take advantage of economies of scale when purchasing inputs such as fertilizer, agricultural tractors and implements.
Besides working with primary cooperatives, we have in place opportunities that help farmers access our professional advice.
Our Corporative Revitalization Program
The constraints to agriculture development among others include the inaccessibility of small –scale, farmers to financial services, inadequate and ineffective inputs supply and marketing system, huge post harvest losses, agricultural drudgery arising from the nation’s low tractor usage density, limited access to the support services of existing program s /agencies and generally poor rural infrastructure.
If these constraints are to be addresses, the active participation of the small – scale farmers is imperative. To this end, a special Cooperative Revitalization Program (CRP) has been put in place to ensure the effective mobilization and organization of small – scale farmers and skilled unemployed graduates to access, drive, own and sustain progressive initiatives.
This Cooperative Revitalization program is aimed at promoting the establishment of model specialized cooperative per L.G.A with a corresponding apex structure in the 36 states and the FCT. Primary focus of these groups lies in the areas of:
So far, a total of 415 Specialized Cooperative Micro Finance societies , 412 Cooperative Agro –input supply and marketing societies and 381 Cooperative Community Tractor Hiring Service have been established in 433 L.G.A in 24 states in Nigeria.
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