In order to facilitate the growth of a sustainable and inclusive vegetable sector, Horti Nigeria and EnGRAIS project want to develop vegetable crops Agricultural Input Packages (AIPs). Horti Nigeria is a four-year program set up with funding from the Netherlands. According to Mohammed Salasi, Horti Nigeria Programme Director, Nigeria's vegetable sector was under-utilized, with a deficit supply gap of about 13 million tons.
According to Salasi, there are lots of interventions in other crops but very few on vegetables: "Today we are bringing together stakeholders in the agri sector to help develop AIPs for vegetable crops. First of all, we have a sister project funded by USAID that has already developed AIPs on a digital platform and also in hardcopies for maize, rice, cassava, and others. So, when we discussed the program, we realized vegetable is not part of the available packages that have been developed for West Africa."
Salasi said that they invited the government, private sector, agro-input companies, and research institutes to bring the available technologies to the production of vegetables.
Source: nannews.ng
