The Federal Government said it has created an online portal to register about 10 million farmers, adding that process will enable it to 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 the government to set up a 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.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mustapha Shehuri, hinted, that “Nigeria economy has its GDP contracted for two consecutive terms of the second and third quarter in 2020; leading to recession.”