Agric Policy Processes: Farmers Demand 50% Representation

Coalitions of Civil Society under the Voice for Food Security campaign consortium have asked for 50 per cent representation of small-scale farm holders in agricultural policies in the country.

The coalitions, which lamented that small scale farmers who provide 70 per cent of the nation’s food were poorly represented in critical decision making in the sector, called for their full incorporation in the policy making process, so as to achieve the nation’s vision 20:2020.

The National President Civil Society Coalition for Poverty Eradication (CISCOPE),  Dr Dom Okoro, who made the demand in Abuja during an Agricultural Budget Tracking Training Workshop for members of the Association of Small-scale Agro Producers in Nigeria (ASSAPIN), said low participation of small farm holders has been a bane to food insecurity in the country.

Okoro maintained that the national budget in the sector had suffered setbacks because of poor implementation in addressing the real needs of the Nigerian farmers. He added that appropriation to the sector should not be quantity-based; rather it should be on quality, and to aid this, the government should set up a monitoring and evaluation team so as to check-mate  the   problem regarding poor implementation.

Lamenting that many rural farmers do not understand the intricacies of the budgetary allocation in the sector, he said that the workshop was aimed at building the capacities of the farmers so as to give them room to fully participate in the government programmes and policies affecting them.

According to him “our concern is that the small scale farmers who produce all the food are not fully recognised in government policies and programmes, so we want the government policies to address the desires of the rural farmers”.

The programme officer Oxfam GB, Mr. Ayodeji Jaiyeoba, who stressed the need for the government to shift attention from looking for food aid to food production, lamented the inconsistency of government in policy formulation and implementation framework.

Jaiyeoba explained that serving Ministers in the sector, had come and gone with their initiatives and policies, he said  that this had made the policy framework in the sector inconsistent, thereby having a negative impact on the investment in the sector.

He recommended that for the country to achieve its vision of being one of the largest economies by 2020, serving Ministers should monitor their policies so as to align with the vision of achieving 10 per cent GDP growth rate.

Source : Thisday