Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy of Kebbi State, Nigeria.
It is the pivot on which many agribusiness and non- agriculture related businesses thrive providing employment to over 80% of its population.
Agricultural production takes place throughout the year with the wet season production immensely complemented by intensive and large-scale irrigated farming.
This guarantees food availability in all seasons, adequate raw materials supply to industry all-year round and enhances productivity of livestock. With a total arable land area of 1.6 million hectares, marked by wet and dry seasons, diverse soil types and endowed with 420, 000 hectares of Fadama land (out of which 170,000 hectares have shallow extractable aquifers suitable for year-round irrigation),
Kebbi State is suitable to support cultivation of a variety of crops. Additionally, irrigated agriculture is robustly favoured and supported by a plethora of natural aqua endowments, consisting of extensive network of rivers, which include two of the major rivers of Nigeria, Rivers Niger and Rima, and two intermediate rivers, Zamfara and Gulbin Ka and a large number of minor rivers, being tributaries of the above.
Argungu fishing festival in Kebbi State
The banks of River Rima hosts 50% of the Fadama land, 34.7% is on River Niger, 4.1% on River Zamfara while the remaining 11.2% is on minor tributaries. A network of these rivers traverses more than half of the State.
A number of earth dams also exist in addition to quite a number of burrow pits, ponds, gullies, valley depressions, reservoirs, scattered all over the major and intermediate roads, across farmlands, and grazing and rangelands.
On account of these ecological advantages, Kebbi State is a major supplier of rice, groundnut oil, maize, orghum, groundnut, cotton and vegetables (especially onions and chilies) to the South and Western parts of the country. The State has developed its human capital through series of agricultural development programmes.
Some of the agricultural evelopment programmes implemented by Kebbi State since the 1990s include the ADP, Fadama II, Fadama III, the Additional Financing Project, the IFAD/CBARDP (CommunityBased Agricultural and Rural Development Project), IFAD/KBSCBARDP, and IFAD/CASP (Climate Change Adaptation and Agribusiness Support) and ATASP Programmes.
Development Partners such as CARI, Oxfam, Feed the Future, USAID Market 2 and USADF have provided support in various areas including agriculture development, food security, climate resilience, and adaptation and mitigation strategies. These programmes have helped in providing valuable Fadama assets and infrastructures such as tube-wells and wash-bores, feeder roads, transfer of technologies for extraction of shallow aquifers and best agronomic practices for the production of arable crops, tree crops, vegetables, livestock, poultry and fisheries.
Despite its endowments for agricultural production, the agricultural sector has grown at a very slow rate due to obsolete farming techniques and subsistence cultivation. The institutional constraints faced by the sector include the dilapidated condition of most agricultural infrastructure, inadequate skills and human capacity and poor remunerations to agricultural sector workers.
The technical limitations pertain to poor access to mechanized equipment, farm inputs, low improved technologies and inadequate processing and packaging facilities. In addition, high post-harvest losses, poor access to markets and credit, and very low extension service delivery are other constraints that significantly affect farming returns and retard motivation to engage in farming.
