Representatives of farmers and farm input dealers in the country have expressed a preference for the once-popular input access channel termed Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES).
The stakeholders sought the revival of the scheme or the existing Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) overhauled. In a chat with reporters on the side of a workshop on input access which took place in Yola, the Adamawa State capital, the farmers and input dealers said both the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI) and Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) which have been created after GES have failed the real farmers who are the supposed beneficiaries.
The National Publicity Secretary of All Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Mohammed Magaji and National President of Nigeria Agricultural Input Dealers’ Association (NAIDA), Alhaji Kabiru Fara spoke the minds of their colleagues while attending a three-day Northeast Agro-inputs Stakeholders’ Engagement Workshop organised under the auspices of Feed the Future Rural Resilience Activity, with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Mercy Corps, and Save the Child.
According to the NAIDA President, the hundreds of billions of naira spent on the Anchor Borrowers Programme so far cannot be justified as far as agricultural productivity is concerned.
