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FG to Encourage Women farmers with 5 million phones

By on October 19, 2012

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina has made known the Federal Government’s promise to provide mobile phones to Five million women farmers.

 

The Minister made this promise in Abuja at a forum planned to happen together with the annual global marking of October 16 as World Food Day.

Adesina said, the FG had made plans for the provision of 10 million cell phones to farmers next year, thus, the five million phones would come from the 10 million.

 

“First and foremost, we are going to distribute, for next year, 10 million mobile phones.

 

“And when I say we, actually, the Minister of Communications Technology is taking the lead in this, working with my ministry.”

 

“The Minister of Finance, as you know, she is always passionate about women, will do five million phones for women farmers so that we make sure that they get it.”

 

“And those phones are not just for inputs; it is that we want to get our rural folks to get market information, extension information, health information, climate information; all that in local languages on their mobile phones.’’

 

“Secondly we are working with mobile phone companies to expand the number of base stations they have in rural areas so we can reach a lot of people in the rural areas.”

 

“We found that one challenge was the issue of network coverage and that is a challenge we all face as a country; that the issue of connectivity reception in a number of areas has to be dealt with.”

 

“We also have a number of farmers that do not have phones, especially women farmers, and I want to make sure we reach those who do not have phones so that they could really be reached.”

2 Comments

  1. comrade Makeri Kolu

    October 19, 2012 at 2:11 pm

    Nigerians for you. What will be the impact of those phones in hand of those women? It tgat their problem? Where is fertilizer, fund, seedlings and other farming equiptment? I said it that Akinwumi will loss his dignity before leaving that seat

  2. Ebenezer Okebukola

    October 20, 2012 at 3:12 pm

    Telephone distribution to women farmers to obtain info on weather and other agricultural parameters is a good idea.What of their husbands and other men folks who have been engaged in farming from garden of Eden?Most importantly I think the FG should pay more attention into providing the environment to encourage more people into farming;As farming is the easiest way to generate employment.Such mesures include:A.Buying up excess farm produce for storage or processing or both at a price that will guarantee reasonable profit to the farmers.B.Processing the produce to meet local industrial need and for export.C.Provide further subsidy on farm inputs to enable farmers procure adequate farm inputs per unit of holding.Where the cost of input is prohibitive to the farmers,they end up using lesser input per holding.This means lesser yied per holding.C.Weather Forcast should be localised to Local Government and Comunity level to reduce risks in arable and tree crop farming.