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Five million farmers to get fertiliser subsidy —Nigerian govt

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The Federal Government announced on Monday that five million smallholder farmers are to get fertiliser subsidy.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono, and the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed disclosed this when they both spoke in Abuja at the consultative meeting with stakeholders on the development of template for administering of fertiliser subsidy to smallholder farmers on sustainable basis.

Nanono stated that the fertiliser subsidy intervention was a directive from the federal government to support the teeming smallholder farmers across the country.

He said the fertiliser subsidy template was being developed with relevant stakeholders on the best way of administering fertiliser subsidy to farmers nationwide on sustainable basis.

Nanono said, “Preparatory to the provision of the subsidy support, I wish to inform you that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has registered and developed the database of the smallholder farmers for easy targeting with the fertiliser subsidy support.

Read also: 2019: Over ‘12.2 million’ farmers donate N1.7bn to Buhari’s re-election campaign

“So far about five million farmers and their farms have been registered with biometrics including farm GIS coordinates.”

The Minister of Finance, said “Please note that our goal is not simply to transfer subsidies to farmers. No, our design principle is to reward behaviour such as purchase of fertiliser by data-identified smallholder farmers as opposed to simply wire monies to anyone who claims to be smallholder farmers or subsidising large-scale farmers.”

The finance minister, who’s speech was read at the event, then urged participants to deliberate on how to deliver smart subsidies on need basis linked to the exact land holding of the farmer as verified by farmer-farm data.

“The subsidy can be delivered as a voucher and we can leverage technology to match farmer requests to their land holdings,” Ahmed stated.

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