Ministry Targets 80,000 Farmers Under GES

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development says it will register 80,000 farmers under the 2013 Growth Enhancement Support GES) Scheme.

The Director of Agriculture in charge of the FCT in the ministry, Mr Charles Momo,  disclosed this in an interview with The Tide source in Gwagwalada on Tuesday. Momo said that 48,000 farmers were registered under the scheme in the first quarter of this year in an exercise which was supposed to end on Tuesday. “We have extended the time to Thursday, April 4, to make up for the Easter holidays. “You know there was no work during the period, so we decided to add three more days to make up for those days that we did not work.’’ He said the exercise, which began on March 18, was supposed to run for two weeks, to enable farmers to benefit from the scheme.

Momo said the extension of time was not as a result of inadequate materials or technical hitches, adding that the low turnout recorded during the exercise was due to the low level of awareness.

“There was not enough awareness among the farmers but on its part, the ministry has done a lot. “We have gone on air to sensitise farmers and we will not stop there because the exercise continues.’’ He recalled that the FCT had been divided into 62 political wards with each ward headed by a trained enumerator. Momo urged traditional rulers, area council authorities, religious and opinion leaders to mobilise farmers in their localities to get registered. Reports say that this year’s exercise, which is a follow-up to that of 2012, is aimed at capturing farmers who were not captured then. The GES scheme is a Federal Government initiative under the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) through which subsidised agriculture inputs such as fertilisers and seeds are made available to farmers.

Under the initiative, farmers access inputs through an electronic distribution channel known as the e-wallet.

One of the conditions of the scheme stipulates that a registered farmer pays 50 per cent of the cost of farm inputs while the federal and state governments pay 25 per cent each on his behalf.

NAN reports that farmers are registered for the scheme nationwide by capturing their data into the ministry’s central data bank.