The Federal Government has been urged to involve farmers, especially women smallholders, in agriculture budgeting processes. Such women farmer are said to produce over 60 percent of the food consumed in Nigeria.
This is contained in the communiqué of a Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on 2019 Agriculture Budget organised by the ActionAid Nigeria, Oxfam in Nigeria, Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Lagos.
The meeting noted that there is no formal strategy for their involvement, resulting in untapped potentials of the women farmers and the attendant low productivity.
The communiqué, jointly signed by 57 participating organisations, said the challenges faced by the agricultural sector included non-compliance to the 10 percent national annual budget for the sector as provided for in the Maputo/Malabo Declarations and lack of timely passage and full release of budgeted funds for agricultural development.