The Emir of Zazzau, Ambassador Ahmad Nuhu Bamalli, has urged Northern women to embrace vegetable farming as a means of livelihood.

According to him, there is a huge market for vegetable farming in the country; therefore, they can make a lot of money doing it.

The Emir made this call while speaking at the closing ceremony of the Sustainable Development Goals Partnership projects (SDGP 1) with the theme 'Transforming Nigeria's Vegetable Markets', organized by East West Seed Foundation in collaboration with the Kaduna State Agricultural Development Agency (KADA) held on Wednesday in the State.

"There is a huge market for vegetable farming and we can make huge money, especially women that are not privileged to work. It's something that can be done at the lower level without bothering to look for white-collar jobs," he said.

In his remarks, the Project Manager of SDGP, Transforming Nigeria's Vegetable Markets Project, East West Seed, Usman Barau, said the SDGP 1 project, co-founded by the Netherlands and other partners, has directly benefited over 136,200 smallholder farmers through practical demonstration training on sustainable farming practices in Kaduna and Kano States.

He explained that the target outreach of the project is 46,200 farmers through intensive training by East West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation.

According to him, 30,000 farmers were reached through non-intensive training by government extension agents.

He also mentioned that 60,000 farmers were reached via advisories from agrodealers.

Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State, represented by Deputy Hadiza Balarabe, commended the organizers for their support towards enhancing vegetable farming in the state.

He described the project as a timely intervention in transforming the vegetable farmers in the state.

The project by East West Seed foundation has so far trained 170,211 smallholder vegetables farmers which superceded the target given to them of 136,200 farmers in both Kaduna and Kano States.