Guinness launches scheme to promote agric value chain

In its bid to key into the Federal Government’s policy on diversification and local content, growth of the agricultural value chain and that of smallholder farmers, Guinness Nigeria Plc., has launched an agriculture scheme tagged: “Grow with Nigeria”

The initiative, launched in Abuja, according to the Managing Director of the company, Baker Magunda is a demonstration of its commitment to government’s diversification efforts.

“Over the last 20 years, our business has consistently sourced its entire core ingredients such as sorghum and malt extract locally through the various local raw material chains. Currently, our local content sourcing is 75 per cent and we plan to increase this significantly within the next couple of years.

“These partnerships have enabled us to develop an ecosystem of private sector players creating value that impact smallholder farmers, who form an integral part of our business directly. In 2018, we partnered with 5, 121 smallholder farmers across eight states of Nigeria. These farmers were provided access to finance, certified seeds, unadulterated inputs, mechanisation, training on good agronomic practice and basic book keeping, supplier credit process, extension support and access to market.”

He noted that with the intervention, Guinness Nigeria was able to leverage on the collaboration as provided by the respective partners in the ecosystem to improve the livelihoods of the farmers by moving them from subsistence level to full economic inclusion.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural development, Audu Ogbeh, who commended the company, said when the company began buying sorghum from local farmers, a lot of people realised that it was a revolution that started ahead of its time. With investments in Agriculture, local manufacturing and backward integration, the Guinness Nigeria Local Raw Materials (LRM) initiative, has benefited over 6,000 subsistence farmers, rural traders and various stakeholders in the production value chain.