Nigeria as an agrarian country has over the years been unable to put in place adequate and up to date information of its farmers across the country, a situation that has brought little result to enormous government efforts to revitalise the sector as resources deployed to farmers hardly reach them.
However, with more government attention swinging to the agricultural sector with a focus on the development of agricultural commodity value chains, the need for information on the number of farmers, their location and the various farming activities they are involved in has become very obvious factor in implementation of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda of the current administration.
At the heart of it all is the challenge of paucity of data in terms of farmer population, cropping area and production output.
The recently flagged off of the National Farmers Database exercise by the ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is expected to fill the gap and make agricultural financing and inputs support more efficient by ensuring that the target group which are the farmers get adequate inputs and other supports meant for them to promote food production and ensure food security.
An effective farmers database would enable government implements its growth enhancement support, provides multiple and efficient services of the agricultural commodity value chains, facilitate a good monitoring and evaluation processes for any resources deployed to the sector as well as ensure a more real time advisory services to rural farmers.
According to the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Ezekiel Oyemomi, the government thought it wise to know its farmers and establish an efficient link with them because gone are the days when only few benefitted from government assistance to farmers.
He said the data when collected would be used by agricultural stakeholders in both the private and public sectors in budgeting, community planning and policy formulation.
A comprehensive, credible and reliable data of farmer’s basic information such as gender, size of farmland, types of agricultural activities, income and access to inputs and markets among others is critical to the success of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda?? and to the realisation of government’s vision 20:2020 as well as to quality and nutritious food availability.
This survey is expected to provide an opportunity for the collation of verifiable and well harmonized data of farmers to whom the delivery of services under the on-going government transformation agenda would be built on.
On his part, the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has reiterated government’s intention to provide local farmers with farm inputs such as fertilizer, insurance, seeds, access to markets and agricultural financing among others to ensure adequate food productions.
Addressing farmers at the recently concluded National Agricultural Show along Keffi-Abuja road, Nasarawa State, Akinwumi made it clear that government intends to make agriculture a commercial business instead of a development programme so that farmers can benefit from their efforts.
He advised the perceived fertilizer cartel to go out and deal directly with farmers since government will no longer handle issues of fertilizer procurement and distribution, instead the money would be placed in the hands of farmers through a voucher system.
The key benefits of the fertilizer voucher system is that real farmers would access fertilizer at cheaper rates, the distribution would be private sector driven thereby encouraging market competition and price stability.
“A total of 4.0 million metric tons of high quality assorted fertilizers would be distributed to farmers at lower rate using the electronic voucher system” Adesina said. This can be realised through a reliable farmers’ database.
According to the ministry, farmers in the 774 local governments across the 36 states in Nigeria would be registered and their details documented, verified and synchronized for use by both government and the private sector.
According to documents availed by the National Farmer Data Base Secretariat in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, about 4000 Extension Agents/Cooperative Officers would be engaged at the farm level. The registration which will be done in phases had? the first phase of field work conducted between the 1st and 14th December 2011.
Good as the project appears, it is obvious that the exercise would have to battle with duplication of data as many farmers who belong to one or two related agricultural associations and institutions such as ADPs, FADAMA, USAID-MARKET, might have their names captured from an existing data in those associations/institutions which forms part of primary sources of data collection for National Farmer Data Base.
However, an official statement from the secretariat allayed the fear and gave an assurance that the software developed for this exercise will automatically eliminate any duplication as data collected will be concurrently checked with existing? data bases of INEC, National Communication Commission (NCC), National Identity Card, and Drivers License respectively.
It is hoped that, if the federal government’s transformation agenda really goes the way it is promised, Nigeria may be gradually moving from food insecurity to food surplus. The Minister has assured that indeed there will be a change within a short time.