The Director, Fertiliser, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Akinbolawa Osho, said on Wednesday that farmers should be ready to pay a token for seeds by 2014.
Osho, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja while speaking within the context of the distribution of seeds free of charge under the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme.
According to Osho, the Federal Government has been giving farmers the seeds free of charge to encourage them to plant improved seeds.
He said: “Why we had to give the seeds out free was because we found out that our farmers really do not know the importance of planting improved seeds.
“So, for us to get them to develop that culture of cultivating improved seeds, we need to get something to attract them.
“We have done that for two years and I think by next year, our farmers should be ready to start paying something for the seeds.
“I think right now, our farmers too have seen the benefits of using improved seeds.
“So, from next year, they may have to start paying something.”
Osho observed that there were a couple of challenges in the first phase of the scheme, adding that the government was working hard to address the challenges.
He said that as part of measures to address the challenges of getting inputs across to the farmers, the Federal Government had introduced Supply Chain Managers.
“We brought in Supply Chain Managers to bridge the gap of inputs distribution to farmers as at when due,” he said.
He noted that the issue of mobile network and infrastructure had been persistent over the years but that it was getting better.
Osho said: “Network and infrastructure problems have always been a challenge.
“They came up last year and they are still on this year.
“This year, we have improved on addressing the challenges of mobile network and Short Message Service to farmers.
“We have addressed those to a large extent.”
The director said that the roll-out of the general and specialised GES at different times of the year was also a challenge that would be addressed by 2014.
He explained that the general GES was the one for all the farmers while the specialised GES involved cassava, fish, soya bean and some other crops and non-crops.
“We also need to revalidate our data bank in order to further identify the real farmers.
“We learnt that some farmers are re-selling their inputs, which is not good enough.”
Osho expressed regret that the issue of farmers re-selling their inputs was against the aim of the scheme and should be critically addressed.
He further said that the issue of associations allegedly submitting names of ‘ghost; farmers was totally unacceptable and that was one of the reasons the data bank needed to be revalidated.
The director noted that less than five million farmers were registered last year while 10 million farmers were expected to be registered this year, adding that almost nine million farmers had already been registered.
Also, Osho said that the ministry had given a time limit for each value chain to submit a list of their farmers to enable them to participate in the (specialised) GES for peculiar value chains.
He explained that any value chain that did not submit its list before September 5, would not benefit this year.
He said this was being done to avoid any delay in the specialised GES implementation.
The director urged the stakeholders to be on the same page in terms of programme planning and programme implementation to ensure smooth operation.
Meanwhile, the All Farmers Association of Nigeria has urged the Federal Government to address the challenges facing the scheme.
Dr. Tunde Arosanyin, the National Financial Secretary of AFAN, said that there was room for improvement on the scheme.
Arosanyin said: “There is still room for improvement because in some states, it is working but not at the level it is supposed to work.
“There are middlemen who are involved as agro-dealers and some of them are not making the scheme work.
“But there is need to finetune the scheme in order to achieve 100 per cent success.”
He, however, called on all farmers in the country to embrace the Federal Government’s initiative.
He observed that the Federal Government ought to have resolved the challenges since the scheme was in its second year.
According to him, there are still lingering problems of un-updated farmers’ database and inadequate farm inputs.
He said that the association discovered that some farmers still could not find their names on the datebase.
Arosanyin also advised the Federal Government to include non-crop farmers in the in scheme as this category was left out of the scheme last year.
He added that activities involving the non-crop sector should be continuous since they spanned through the year.
He said it was only when inputs were channelled to the non-crop sub-sector that there would be a holistic inputs distribution to farmers through the GES.
He, however, expressed optimism that something urgent would be done in the non-crop sub-sector before the end of the year.
The GES scheme is a Federal Government initiative under the Agricultural Transformation Agenda, aimed at subsidising the cost of major agricultural inputs, such as fertilisers and seeds.
Under the initiative, farmers access inputs through an electronic distribution channel known as the e-Wallet.
The condition of the e-Wallet scheme stipulates that a farmer registered under the scheme pays 50 per cent of the cost of farm inputs while the federal and state governments pay 25 per cent each.
One of the requirements for the scheme is the national farmers’ registration exercise, where farmers’ data are captured into the ministry’s central data bank.
GES: Farmers may start paying for seeds by 2014 – Director
