By; ISAAC ODEH, Kaduna
The Kaduna State Government has said that efforts are being made to restore a total of 22,435 hectares of degraded land in order to enhance food security in the state.
Murtala Dabo, Commissioner for Agriculture, disclosed this on Tuesday in Kaduna, at a one day stakeholders meeting with chairmen of the 23 local government areas (lga) of the state.
The programme was organised by Agro-Climate Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) and state Ministry of Environment, in partnership with the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).
Dabo, who is also the co-chairman, State Steering Committee of ACReSAL Project, expressed satisfaction that the collaboration would restore degraded lands in the local government areas of the state.
He said that over 500,000 lands that were degraded; hence the need for collaboration between relevant stakeholders to enable ACReSAL to make progress in the restoration of degraded lands.
Dabo said for the state to tackle food insecurity, it needed to recover the degraded lands so as to restore lands for cultivation.
“This restoration will address climate change dangers, if not mitigated, posed threat to our grassroots, where farming activities take place,’’ he said.
The commissioner called on local government chairmen to be active on the restoration programme in order to ensure food security, while minimising effects of climate change.
Kassim Abdulrauf, Project Agriculture Officer, said the ACReSAL project is an ambitious and transformational engagement, aimed at restoring degraded lands.
“The main component of our meeting is to deepen our commitment to community climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation,’’ he said.
He commended the chairmen for speeding up the process of identifying the degraded lands, measured the hectares and submitted the land area to the project team.
Abdulrauf listed the local governments to benefit from the first phase as Zaria, Lere, Giwa, Makarfi, Kubau, Jamaa, Sanga, Ikara,Jaba, Kachia, Kagarko, Zango Kataf, Soba, Kauru, and Sabon Gari.
He urged the chairmen to ensure their renewed commitments to the implementation of the projects.
The chairmen were presented with maps of identified degraded lands of each local government.
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