The Federal Government said it has created an online portal to register about 10 million farmers, adding that process will enable it capture their biography, geographical information of their farmlands, crops and volumes of what they produce in the country.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono, disclosed this during the opening ceremony of the 44th council meeting of the National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development (NCARD), yesterday, in Abuja.
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 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. “A major hallmark of our agricultural interventions is inclusiveness. We have catered for the youths, women and many demographic considerations in our implementation strategies.”
The Minister highlighted the outbreak of COVID-19, floods and insecurity as some of the hiccups bedeviling the agricultural sector, which, however prompted government to set up structural mechanism to address the problems.
According to him, the NCARD will 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. [The Sun]
