Gender Plan to transform women to commercial farmers, says minister- By Seun Ayeni

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 Minister reportedly acknowledged some challenges facing women in agricultural sector to include poor access to finance and farm input such as fertilizers, improved seeds, farm machinery, agro-chemicals, access to land, market access and in some cases insecurity amongst others.

The first lady, Dr. (Mrs) Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, represented by her Special Assistant Dr. Hajo Sani, said that launching of the National Gender Action Plan would go a long way to uplift women from subsistence agriculture to modern agriculture and that educating a girl-child is paramount for sustainable development of the society,noting that when you educate a girl-child, you have empowered the child to be able to stand on her own.

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.