Mohammed Salasi Idris

Mohammed Salasi Idris is program director of HortiNigeria. For the past three years, he has managed and coordinated the activities of IFDC’s consultancy role under that program, reaching more than 15,000 farmers. Previously, his work with the MARKETS II project reached about 200,000 rice farmers with the techniques of urea deep placement technology across 12 key rice-producing states in Nigeria, where rice farmers experienced a yield increase from an average of 3.5 metric tons per hectare (mt/ha) to above 6.5 mt/ha. He was instrumental in persuading Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture to include urea supergranules as one of the subsidized inputs for irrigated rice farmers in the government’s dry season subsidy program, the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) Scheme, in 2014. Between 2011 and 2013, Idris served as agro-input specialist for the Dutch-funded Cassava+ project, where he conducted capacity assessments on existing agro-dealers in the operational areas of the Cassava+ project and facilitated the supply and sales of about 10,000 bundles of improved cassava stems through the agro-input dealer distribution channel in Taraba state. He worked with two members of CropLife Nigeria (Swiss Biostadt Ltd. and HarvestField Ltd.) and rolled out a partnership on an agro-dealer/youth support program within the project operational area of Taraba in 2012. Prior to that, he worked as program research and entrepreneurship officer and then fertilizer intervention manager under the DFiD-PrOpCom Program. Idris holds a master’s degree in agricultural extension and rural sociology from the Federal University of Technology, Nigeria.