The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh |
The Minister of Agriculture
and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh has said that the objectives of the
National Gender Action plan was to build the capacities of women farmers to
transit from subsistence farming to medium/large scale farming. He made the remark
at the launching of the National Gender Action Plan (NGAP) for Agriculture in
Abuja, recently.
This was contained in a
press release issued on behalf of the ministry’s Director of Information by
Ms Juliet
Okeh and made available to FoodFarmNews.
The press release stated that women are good
managers, and their commitment to the well-being of the family and the society
could not be over emphasized as they remained the anchor of Nigeria’s
agriculture as they contribute immeasurably to the development of the sector
with evidence of statistics that showed women constitute 70% of the small scale
farmers who actually feed the nation.
The
FMARD Permanent Secretary, Dr.Abudulkadir Muazu who was represented by a director
in the Ministry, Dr.Watergire Bright,disclosed that Nigeria agriculture and
food industry were still unable to meet the demand of population of over 170
million both in quantitative and qualitative terms but assured that Nigeria was
working to reduce its food support bill of N1.2 trillion per year. Doing this
would help local producers to take advantage of the opportunities in order to
create wealth and generate jobs in the country.
Director
of Extension Services in the Ministry, Mrs. KarimaBabaginda stated that NGAP was
a framework for positive action aimed at ensuring that current policies of the
sector actually yield tangible results each year. She added that it was also
aimedat outlining rural concrete programmes and actions required to maximizing
the potentials of many farmers including women practitioners in agriculture.
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