Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Akwa-Ibom, Others Benefit From US Govt’s $22m Support For Cocoa Value Chain

Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Akwa-Ibom, Abia, and Cross Rivers States have been chosen as beneficiaries of the $22 million support for Nigeria’s cocoa value chain provided by the Food for Progress program of the United States Department of Agriculture in collaboration with Lutheran World Relief.

The project is anticipated to be implemented over the next five years.

The project will target farmers in low productivity but high promising areas, as well as farmers in high density, high productivity communities.

The primary objective of the Food for Progress project is to increase cocoa productivity by leveraging climate smart agricultural measures. In addition, the project will support improved access to inputs, technical resources and capacity, post-harvest processing and export markets.

Counselor for Agricultural Affairs, U.S Mission Nigeria, Gerald Smith, explained that the project will employ an approach that enables farmers to not only produce more cocoa and preserve the land’s fertility and biodiversity, but also realise an important triple bottom line of people, profit, and planet.

“Food for Progress programme is the cornerstone of United States Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service international capacity-building efforts with the principal objectives of improving agricultural productivity and expanding trade of agricultural products,” Smith said.