NASC To Ensure Seeds, Fertilisers Get To Farmers

The Ministry of Agriculture has mandated the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) to ensure that 90 per cent of inputs gets to farmers under the Growth Enhancement Support scheme (GES).

The scheme trains agro-dealers on the new way of distributing of agricultural inputs to farmers in the rural areas.

Mr Olusegun Olatokun, the Coordinating Director of the Council, in an interview with the newsmen on Tuesday, in Abuja said that only 11 per cent of the inputs got to the farmers in the first phase of the project.

He explained that the input include fertilisers, seeds, micro-nutrients among others.

Olatokun said that the scheme had rounded up its second phase and farmers had received an average of 50 per cent of the inputs requirements unlike the 11 per cent they received in the initial phase.

The Director said that language and communication problems were the initial challenges of the scheme but that these challenges were addressed after the first phase of the project.

He said that one of the steps being taken to address the issue of language barrier was that the farmers are to receive their inputs arrival alerts text messages in the three major Nigerian languages and also “Pidgin” English and English language.

“Federal Government has created redemption points in each local government area and has deployed indigenous staff to each of the centres to help the farmers overcome any challenges they might be encountering”, he added.

“There are 774 local government areas we are working on and we have redemption point in each of the local governments”.

“The Hon. Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina has also instructed the Council to create help desks in each local government area “.

He said that the federal government has resolved to use paper voucher for farmers who have communication problems in their areas and those who do not have mobile phones.

Olatokun explained that at the end of the second phase assessment, farmers had complained that because of the increase in their production, prices of crops were crashing.

“So, we have looked into the value chain to address this issue. As they are producing, we will be providing market.

“We have captured 25 states in this scheme and they are the only ones that will benefit from the 50 per cent off the prices of inputs”.