By Bisola Adeyemo
The Federal Government has created a database for all the farmers in the Agricultural sector for Food and Jobs Program (AFJP), to capture the biodata of the farmers, link with the geographical information of their farms, crops and volumes they produce.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono, disclosed this during the concluded part of the 44th regular meeting of the National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development on Thursday in Abuja.
According to the Minister, NatureNews gathered that the database will feed into the monitoring and evaluation of its interventions and projects so that it can measure impact along the line.
“We initially set out to capture the data of 2.4million farmers across the country, the results from the exercise have encouraged the Economic Sustainability Plan team to expand the data capture to 10million farmers.
“This database is going to be the platform for government interventions going forward, putting an end to ghost schemes and other unscrupulous practices in the agricultural industry.
“The National Livestock Transformation Plan has been adjudged worldwide to be a well-conceived project which seeks to transform our livestock sector from nomadic-dependent sector into an organized ranching one.
“To this end, 22 State and the Federal Capital Territory have registered with the NLTP Office, out of which 10 States have created their own teams which have been trained by the Federal Office. Seven of these 10 States have also earmarked about 19 Grazing Reserves for the implementation of the NLTP, with a total land size of approximately 400,00 hectares.
“It is therefore safe to say, that the NLTP, when fully implemented will bring an end to the incessant clashes between the farmers and herdsmen and at the same time introduce the herders to the modern way of raising cattle, with all the added benefits of improved feeding, improved animal and human health, genetic improvement, value addition and better socio-economic standing for all participants.
“The aggregation of all players in the value chain at the implementation sites is also bound to improve the local economy of the communities within the vicinity of the grazing reserves,” he said.
He, therefore, urged participants to follow suit, as well as imbibe the spirit of transparency and cooperation.
In his welcoming address, Hon Minister of State for Agriculture Hon. Mustapha Baba Shehuri stated that “The fact that we did not import food during the lockdown was a testimony that we can grow what we eat and eat what we produce.
“A major hallmark of our agricultural interventions is inclusiveness.
“We have tried to cater to youths, women and many other demographic considerations in our implementation strategies.” he added.
