Like other regions in Africa, farmers in Nigeria depend on agricultural inputs to increase their productivity, income, and output. However, most smallholder farmers in rural Africa lack knowledge and access to quality inputs, directly affecting their productivity. Increased access to quality inputs would go a long way in helping them achieve maximum production. In Nigeria, the partnership between VD&S, Royal Blue Contractors, and 2SCALE was created with the aim to ensure that smallholder farmers have constant access to quality farm inputs at affordable prices. Consequentially, this will increase their yield and access to markets.
To promote easy access to inputs by smallholder vegetable farmers while enhancing inclusivity in the vegetable value chain, the business champions are working hand in hand with village input agents. The role of the village inputs agents is to serve as an interlink between the business champions and the farmer groups/ producers groups through sales and distribution of agro-inputs to individual farmer groups in agribusiness clusters.
Each Agribusiness cluster (ABC) with support from the business champion appointed women and youth to take on the role of VIAs. They are mainly members of cooperatives who collate demand from their clusters and send it to the business champion who supplies the members of their clusters with good quality agro-inputs. Each Village Input Agent is linked directly to either Royal Blue (for clusters in the North) or VD&S (for clusters in the South).
Activities of the Village Input Agents
The VIAs were trained to gather input demand from each farmer, how to place an order and how to organize logistics and payment. They were also taught how to identify good seeds, and properly apply chemicals. In addition, they were empowered with basic entrepreneurial skills.
Thus far, the model has recorded major successes. It has strengthened ABCs by increasing access to quality input by smallholder farmers, it has also enhanced women and youth inclusion by training them to become extension agents and seedling producers. The village input agents have also increased access to markets by becoming aggregators. They have made transactions worth over N20 million (USD 45,000) since their inception in October 2021.
One of the village input agents is Mr. Francis Famadeji, a 36-year-old member of Adofure cluster in Ondo state says,
I have been an Input agent for about a year now and so far, I have not had any issues with placing orders and receiving inputs from the business champions. I place orders every other week, sometimes twice a week depending on the demand from the farmers. Sometimes, I order for inputs of N100,000 (USD 229.62) or more and I get compensated with 2% of all orders made
Access to Agro-inputs made easy!
The process of ordering for inputs has been made easy, the VIA collates all the orders from the farmers on a WhatsApp group created for this purpose. The orders are sent to the BC after payment has been made and between a day or two, the orders are received. The business champions bear the cost of all logistics as part of their private sector contributions (PSC) in the partnerships.