Stakeholders call for development of national investment plan for agriculture

Stakeholders at the ActionAids Consultative meeting on the 2022 Agriculture Budget has called for development of a National Investment Plan for the agricultural sector.

It further stated that the plan should be a compilation of the State developed agricultural investment plans that contains state crops with comparative advantages. 

This was part of the recommendation contained in the communique signed by 55 organisations after the meeting recently in Abuja, even as the opined that such plan will highlight the commitment of the states, PPP windows and their alignment to the national economic policy and development plans. 

It also urged the three tiersof government to be commit 10% of their annual budget to the Agricultural sector to meet the Maputo/Malabo Declaration as approved by the 44th National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development (NCARD).

“There should be political will to allocate at least 10% of annual budgets and actuals of revenues to the agriculture sector with appropriate budget lines so that Nigeria will be on track in the next Biennial Reporting to the African Union Heads of States and Government in line with the Malabo Declaration and Commitments of 2014. 

“Federal and State governments should allocate more public investments in agriculture to address the strategic areas of investments that would increase the agricultural GDP to at least 6%. These strategic areas of investments include Extension Services, Access to Credit, Women in Agriculture, Youth in Agriculture, Appropriate Labour-Saving Technologies, Inputs, Post-Harvest Losses Reduction Supports (processing facilities, storage facilities, trainings, market access, etc.), Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture (CRSA)/Agroecology, Research and Development, Monitoring and Evaluation, as well as Coordination. 

“The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development should create awareness/sensitization of stakeholders on the CAADP and Biennial Review Process at state and regional levels across the country. There should be continuous adoption of the use of CAADP/Malabo indicators at state level and build the capacity of state-level stakeholders on th he CAADP/Malabo performance indicators. 

“FMARD, State Ministries of Agriculture and other Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should create a budget line to ensure the continued coordination and the implementation of the Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the Agriculture Budget annually at the Federal and State levels,” they recommended. 

The meeting also suggested that there is a need to bring more smallholder women farmers to the front of the budget planning discussion at national and state levels, saying women need to be brought side by side their male counterpart in the discussion and planning of agricultural budget and its implementation.