FG Rolls Out Nationwide Agricultural Growth Enhancement Support (GES); Set To Double Benefiting Farmers In 2014

FG Rolls Out Nationwide Agricultural Growth Enhancement Support (GES); Set To Double Benefiting Farmers In 2014;

Thu, Feb 20, 2014
The Federal Government has begun nationwide roll-out of the 2014 agriculture Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme with plans to cover a number of crops and farmer groups not previously covered under the scheme.
The Permanent Secretary in the federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mrs. Ibukun Odusote, gave the indication recently in Enugu, Enugu State, during a preparatory meeting of stakeholders in the Southern States on the commencement of the implementation of the scheme held at the Golden Royale Hotel.
In her remark to the 315 participants, including all State Commissioners for Agriculture drawn from 17 Southern States, Taraba, Kwara and Kogi States, as well as representatives of Banks, farm input suppliers, agro dealers, supply chain managers and consultants, the Permanent Secretary stated that to ensure only genuine farmers benefitted from the scheme, government conducted an enumeration of farmers during which a total 10.5 million farmers have been captured in the database.
She informed participants that at the commencement of the GES In 2012, farmers who benefitted from the scheme received 50% and 100% subsidy for fertilizer and improved seeds respectively, with beneficiaries accessing support materials through cellphones and in limited cases, manual redemption was used for the benefiting farmers that had no cellphones. According to her, the scheme is very different from the old system where government used general subsidy that could be accessed by anybody, resulting in most get government farm support, especially fertilizers being hijacked by corrupt middlemen who put them in the open market and out of the reach of the intended farmers. Henceforth, the Perm Sec said, only registered farmers can buy government subsidised seeds and fertilizer, under the electronic wallet scheme. She told the participants that Nigeria is the first in Africa to launch an electronic wallet system for the delivery of subsidized inputs to farmers.
Because of the effectiveness of the scheme, Mrs. Odusote said that for the first time in Nigeria, it is possible to tell with confidence which farmer received what input, when and how much they paid the farmer and government paid for the input respectively.
She also stated that unlike in the 2012 period when most of the beneficiaries were farmers from the Northern States, all 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) participated in the scheme. On the whole, 5. 28 million farmers were reached with subsidised inputs under generic GES, while on the specialized value chains, 272, 798 farmers, excluding farmers that benefitted under the aquaculture and livestock subsectors which were included in the 2013 season.
Odusote posited that when the data of dry season is added to the rain fed programme, the number of beneficiaries would have reached 6.0 million farmers in the 2013/2014 programme, an increase of 350% from the 2012 figure of 1.7 million.
According to her, President Goodluck Jonathan approved a special dry season intervention fund of N14.00 billion with which rice farmers were targeted in the 2012/2013 dry season programme. In the 2013/2014 programme, 3 other crops, namely wheat, maize and groundnuts were added to rice and about 800,000 farmers are being targeted to redeem various inputs as against 350,000 that benefitted in 2012/2013.
The Perm Sec said the Ministry decided to hold the current preparatory stakeholder meeting much earlier than that of last year, so that targeted farmers can access their subsidised inputs well ahead of their needs to ensure better success of the programme in 2014.
 At the end of the one-day meeting, participants issued a 16-point communique among which resolution were a commendation for the enlistment of the technical support of the National Identity Management Agency (NIMC) by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to re-validate and escalate farmers registration with a view to capturing their biometrics, and the introduction of Point of Sale (POS) and “Tap and Pay” device presented by IFDC to enable farmers without cellphones redeem inputs.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PLANT NURSERY, DEFINITION, TYPES AND MANAGEMENT

Image
Definition of nursery Nursery is a place where plants are grown, nurtured and sold out. Generally, various commercial crop growers require a good quality saplings or grafts of genuine type. Types of Nurseries  Nurseries are categorized in different ways.  I. According to time duration nurseries are classified in two types:  1) Temporary nursery – This type of nursery is developed only to fulfill the requirement of the season or a targeted project. The nurseries for production of seedlings of transplanted vegetables and flower crops are of temporary nature. Like wise temporary arrangement for growing forest seedlings for planting in particular area can also be done in temporary nursery.  2) Permanent nursery – This type of the nursery is placed permanently so as to produce plants continuously. These nurseries have all the permanent features. The permanent nursery has permanent mother plants. The work goes on continuously all the year round in this ...
Read more

Financial Services To Villages Achievable In 2020 – CBN Governor

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele on Thursday said plans to render financial services to villages across the country by the end of 2020 are on top gear just as it reiterate it commitment to a cashless society. Mr Godwin who made the disclosure at a two-day CBN fair tagged “Promoting Financial Stability and Economic Development” said the CBN now has a Central Complaints Center where customers can present their challenges and it will be resolved immediately. Represented by the Benin Branch Controller, Mr R.D Jumbo, the CBN governor said it became pertinent to sensitize the people on their rights and duties as a customer urging participants to be dedicated in preaching the gospel of the apex bank of actualizing a full cashless society by the year 2020. According to him, “The banking sector has improved to the extent that you can buy and transfer money with your phone. You can use your ATM to pay for goods in shops through POS. He said the programme ...
Read more

HEALTH BENEFITS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Image
Health Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables 1 Joanne L. Slavin 2 , * and    Beate Lloyd 3   Author Affiliations 2 Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN; and 3 PepsiCo Nutrition, Global Research and Development, PepsiCo, Valhalla, NY ↵ * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jslavin@umn.edu .                      Abstract Fruits and vegetables are universally promoted as healthy. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommend you make one-half of your plate fruits and vegetables. Myplate.gov also supports that one-half the plate should be fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables include a diverse group of plant foods that vary greatly i...
Read more