According to BusinessDay, a total of 601 Commodity Interest Groups have been formed, 426 registered as cooperatives, comprising of 4395 farmers of the total 10,000 expected at project closure. Over 1800 had also benefitted from capacity building and linkages to improved markets and market information while 29,000 have benefitted indirectly from project interventions.

These facts were revealed yesterday in Lagos at a press interactive forum by Bolaji Balogun, Lagos State Coordinator of CADP.

CADP is a comprehensive five year (2009-2014) project developed by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and rural development in collaboration with the World Bank and other stakeholders.

It is meant to help participating small and medium scale commercial farmers to access improved technology, infrastructure, finance and output markets.

Industry analysts believe the project is timely as the interest in commercial agriculture in Nigeria is growing.

The strategic thrust of the project using the value chain approach is to support access to productivity-enhancing technologies; improve market access to rural infrastructure; build and improve capacity in areas of need; and improve access to rural infrastructure that is network of roads and electricity.

The CADP project is being implemented in five states of the federation, namely, Cross Rivers, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano and Lagos along eight value chains. The total number of direct project beneficiaries is estimated at 50,000 "10,000 beneficiaries per state" over a period of five years. Small and medium commercial farms benefit directly while many households will benefit indirectly through access to farm roads, energy and markets opportunities.

The key performance indicators of CADP, according to Balogun, are 25 per cent increase in total production and processing of targeted value chains among participating small and medium scale commercial farmers (rice, poultry, and aquaculture and 30 per cent increase in total sales of agricultural products under the targeted value chains also among participating small and medium scale commercial farmers.

There are plans underway possibly to extend the project to additional Thirteen states, bringing the total number of states to 18,and extending the project life till 2018 having discovered its position to help in achieving the objectives of the federal government Agricultural Transformation Agenda as agreed during the project’s midterm in December 2011.