FG Sets Up Portal To Track Agric Intervention Programmes

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Muhammad Sabo Nanono has introduced an online portal to ensure efficient and effective monitoring of government’s intervention in the agricultural sector.

The initiative which targets 10 million farmers, is expected to capture the bio data of farmers, linked with geographical information of their farmlands, crops as well as overall volumes of production in the country.

Speaking during the opening ceremony of the 44th council meeting of the National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development (NCARD), in Abuja, Nanono explained that the database will be a platform for the Federal Government’s intervention going forward.

This, according to him would put an end to ghost schemes and other unscrupulous practices in the agricultural industry.

He said, “A major hallmark of our agricultural interventions is inclusiveness. We have catered for the youths, women and many demographic considerations in our implementation strategies.”

“As a stop-gap intervention, we 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.

“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 explained further that the scheme will be implemented in 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 reduced price due to economy of scale,” he said.

The Minister noted that the challenges brought by the emergence of the COVID-19 Pandemic ,floods and insecurity have galvanized the government into setting up necessary structure to address infrastructural deficiency, technology gaps, security challenges and extension inadequacy .

This approach according to him would aid achieving the national mandate of economic diversification and national development.