Business
FG Plans Platform For Broad Participation In Agriculture
The Federal
Government said it will provide a platform to ensure women and youths participate fully in agricultural production in the country.
This is contained in the 2016 Nigeria Agric Sector Roadmap, recently approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in Abuja with a titled tagged, “The Agriculture Promotion Policy.’’
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Audu Ogbeh, who signed the document, said that the roadmap would engage more women and youths in decision making process for agricultural growth.
Ogbeh said that the decision making process would be expanded in the production of agriculture as well as improving the progress of the sector.
According to him, the roadmap will run from 2016 to 2020 and will review the subsisting gender policy document with a view to improve the implementation activities in the sector.
“It will also expand training of key leaders and influencers across the ministry to ensure gender and youth considerations integrated into the decision making.
“The roadmap also set to alleviate the suffering of rural dwellers by creating enablers for economic take-off to reduce poverty and increase rural development.
“Government will ensure that all stakeholders play their roles in the provision of rural infrastructure to attract investment in the rural areas,” he said.
The minister said that the government would strengthen all research centres across the country.
He explained that the effort was aimed at promoting national food security that would lead to self sufficiency in food production.
“To this end, the government will engage its institutions and agencies at different locations in the country to conduct researches and make the research results available to farmers across the country.
“Challenges such as poor and irregular funding for agricultural research and innovations generated not effectively delivered to farmers will be addressed timely for agricultural growth,’’ he said.