Dr Tunde Arosanyin, the National Coordinator, Zero Hunger Commodity Farmers in Nigeria, has urged all governments to grant special movement waivers to farmers in the face of the COVID-19 lockdown to avert food crisis.
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Arosanyin made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Ilorin.
“Most importantly, I want to advise both the Federal and State Governments to grant movement waiver to farmers and farm produce as from the end of April.
“This step should be taken to avoid a possible food crisis this year,” he urged.
He said that in Nigeria, the food production pattern in the first, second and third quarters of the year is January to March for completion of harvest and storage.
“April to June for land preparation and planting; July to September for late planting and October to December for harvesting and processing.
“Between November and March irrigation system is practiced by few farmers to produce mainly vegetables.
“In view of the analysis made, it will be advisable to allow farmers unrestricted movement to commence their farming activities as over 80 per cent of our food output is rain fed production,” he said.
He also urged the federal government to reactivate the Growth Enhancement Scheme and the E-wallet programmes of the previous administration.
“The programme was aimed at supporting farmers with farm inputs at subsidised rates,” he said.
Arosanyin, a former chairman of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) in Kogi, said that if GES and E-Wallet are reactivated, it would complement efforts and activities of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) to improve food production in the country.”
Under the E-Wallet, he asserted that over 12 million farmers from all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory were captured in the database by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
He explained that through the electronic platform, farmers were reached in the past with seedlings, fertilisers, herbicide and insecticide.
The farmer leader also canvassed for acceleration of the effort of the Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, to reactivate these schemes.