The Federal Government has revealed that it has set up an online portal for farmers to ensure efficient and effective monitoring of its intervention in the Agricultural sector.
This initiative is expected to capture the biodata of farmers and link it with the geographical information of their farm plots, crops and the volumes of production in the country.
This disclosure was made by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Muhammad Sabo Nanono, while speaking during the opening ceremony of the 44th council meeting of the National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development (NCARD), held at the International Conference Centre, on Thursday, June 17, 2021.
What the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development is saying
Nanono said, ‘’ Although we initially set out to capture the data of 2.4 million farmers across the country, the results from the exercise have encouraged the Economic Sustainability Plan Team to expand the data capture to 10 million farmers’’
The Minister pointed out that the database will be a platform for the Federal Government interventions going forward, putting an end to ghost schemes and other unscrupulous practices in the agricultural industry.
Nanono explained that as a stop-gap intervention, the ministry launched the Agric for Food and Jobs Program, originally conceived as an input loan for smallholder farmers across several commodities including maize, rice, cotton, groundnut, sorghum, cowpea, soybean, sesame, cassava and oil palm.
Going further, the minister said, ‘’The scheme brought into a partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria, Commodity Association and Agricultural Platform Companies for effective facilitation. This we believe will not only improve production significantly but also aid in the off–taking of produce while providing input at a reduced price due to economy of scale.
‘’The challenges brought by the emergence of the COVID – 19 Pandemic, floods, and insecurity has galvanized the government into setting up a necessary structure to address the infrastructural deficiency, technology gaps, security challenges, and extension inadequacy. This approach is believed to be the right one for achieving our desired economic diversification and national development.’’
He noted that the NCARD would promote the existing policies, programmes, and projects at the national and sub-national levels for the purpose of entrenching synergy, best practices, entrepreneurship, livelihood, and growth in the sector.
Nanono harped on the fact that agricultural productivity can only improve through the mechanization of production activities, adding that as part of the effort to improve the agricultural production profile of the country, the ministry got into a partnership with the government of Brazil through one of their foremost technology transfer, the Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV).
He further said that this partnership has yielded an Agricultural Mechanization loan to the tune of 950 million euros which will be granted to Nigerian entrepreneurs to establish service centres across all the 774 Local Government of the country, selling services to all categories of farmers and thereby helping to improve their productivity.