The partnership is contained in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the state government and the agricultural firm in Kaduna.

It is directed at increasing the production of maize and soybeans in Nigeria with higher quality and competitive pricing.

Speaking at the event, the program lead, Mr. Olushola Fashedemi, who is the head of Commercial Golden Agri Input, said the initiative is a national project dedicated to increasing the availability of maize as raw material and for nutrition in the country.

In his address earlier, the state commissioner for agriculture, Hon. Halima Lawal commended the Project YALWA initiative and urged farmers to take advantage of the opportunity.

The highlight of the launch was the symbolic presentation of hybrid seed corn, 50kg 20:10:10 NPK fertilizer, and 25kg Soybean seed and chemicals to the family.

According to Fashedemi, “the program is touching on the Soybean value chain which is very important especially to Flour Mills because it is our key value chain. Flour Mill is one of the largest users of raw materials in the way of commodities in Nigeria, we use upwards of over 300 metric tonnes of maize alone.

“It is on this premise that our chairman ensures that we can develop raw material availability in the country and impact on food security, which entails us going to the farm gates and giving farmers good agronomic practices extension and making available much-needed inputs.

“We are working with the best quality for seed, we are working with Corteva agric science, hybrid seed best performing company, we can also boast of one of the best quality fertilizers in the country, which we do under the golden fertilizer brand,” Fashedemi said.

The team leader added that they intend to increase the livelihood of farmers, stressing that they have engaged in monitoring, evaluating, and reporting the activities of farmers in partnership with CBN and different state governments.

On the MoU signed with the Kaduna State government, he said, “the MoU took a lot of design of what people find commonplace, working with smallholder farmers with one-hectare farmland, with Kaduna State we tried to put a commercial justification for it.”