By Giwa SHILE
A grantee of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), Environmental Management and Development Trust (EMADET), an NGO, has trained farmers on agro-forest production in Ile-Iran community, Ayedire Local Government Area, Osun state.
Its Director of Programme, Mr Alade Adeleke, said this in Ile-Iran on Sunday.
Adeleke disclosed this on the sideline of GEF inspection and evaluation visit to project site of EMADET in Ile-Iran community.
GEF supports EMADET with a grant of 49,938 dollars to execute a project titled “Integrated Agro-Forestry, Waste Management and Livelihood Enhancement” in Ile-Iran and its environs.
Adeleke, who said his organisation began the training programme on Feb. 13, added that the idea was to teach farmers how their farms could perform better.
“The training is Farmers Face School Programme because the programme was held and delivered in each of the farmers’ farms.
“We have carried out farmers face school programme in six places. For every farm we go, we distribute some farm material such as cutlasses, hoes and farm chemicals,’’ he said.
Adeleke said before the organisation launched the programme, it started the nursery of wrapping leave.
According to him, wrapping leave which is called Thaumatoccocus danielli (or Ewe-eran in south west, Nigeria) is a kind of leave that is used for wrapping hot local food.
“Women use it in wrapping cake (Moin-moin) and corn meal (Eko or Agidi) in major urban centres,’’ the programme director said.
Adeleke said that the organisation had a nursery that had more than 10,000 leave sampling.
“We decided to be taking the leave from nursery to other places to plant in each of the farms where we go and do the farmers face school,’’ he said.
He said the training focused on the new approach to agro-forest production to bridge the gap of deforestation in South west, Nigeria, using Ileran and its environs as its local example.
According to him, Ileran is choosen because of its location that is near the Osun river and also the tail end of tropical rain forest area.
“Cocoa agro-forest is common in this area over a long time; but cocoa agro-forest is dying and forest is depleting.
“Because forest is depleting, most of our land are being converted to savanna.
“EMADET as an organisation feels that something must be done as example to arrest the growing rate of deforestation,’’ the programme director said.
According to him, the organisation chooses wrapping leave as element that makes the forest to look better.
“We also realise that people use nylon because of the depletion of forests and non availability of wrapping leave.
“Our survey across the ten towns of Osun state and even in Lagos showed that wrapping leave is scarce and lack in demand.
“The need for wrapping leave is so high that everybody knows the implication of using nylon that is not good, the aroma, the feeling about heating local hot food from nylon is not as good as wrapping leave.’’
According to him, people see environmental value in it because it degrades easily.
The village head, Ifesowapo Ile-Iran Community, Mr Sawiyu Alao, thanked EMADET for giving rural farmers the training on agro-forestry.
Alao said that the programme had changed farmers’ old practice to agro-forest’s cultivation, production and chemical application.
“Before we don’t know that the way we apply chemical kills our farm produce and the forest but when we apply what EMADET taught us, things in our farms are doing well.
“Apart from giving us training, the organization also gave us farm implement such as hoes, cutlasses and chemical to fumigate our farms,’’ he said.
Mrs Hadijatu Ileowo, a farmer, said that she increased the cultivation of wrapping leave through the training programme given to them by EMADET.
The Balogun of Ile-Iran, Mr Asifatu Awesu, who said that villagers fetched river water for domestic use, thanked the organization for repairing their damaged borehole.
