The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources said on Friday that it had so far registered 250,000 farmers in Kwara under the Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES).
The State Director of the ministry, Mr Buhari Adebisi, disclosed this during an interview in Ilorin.
The Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES), according to him, is one of many critical components of the Federal Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA).
He said it was designed for the specific purpose of providing affordable agricultural inputs like fertiliser and hybrid seeds to farmers in order to increase their yields per hectare and make it comparable to world standards.
Adebisi said the programme had impacted positively on the lives of the farmers by boosting the yield of their crops.
``A farmer who was buying two `mudus' of fertiliser before said he now has two bags of fertiliser through the e-wallet value chain.
``He said he was happy because his crops will yield more now that he has enough fertiliser.
``The expectation of the government is to register 10 million farmers nationwide.
``The projection is that five million
farmers will be registered every year thereafter and by 2015, we hope that we will be able to reach 20 million farmers all over the country.''
He expressed the hope to be able to register 100,000 farmers more to receive the inputs.
He said the number of farmers who had received government's subsidised inputs through mobile phones were negligible due to ignorance.
``Some have also lost their phones; some have even received messages but ignorance. Some cannot be reached or the network is having a problem'', he said
He added that the help-line workers were introduced in order to bring the farmers on the cellular platforms.
Adebisi said that the help-line workers were able to substantially bring the level of those redeemed by e-wallet to a level acceptable to the network providers.
He said 100 per cent of the farmers now have e-wallet even though it has to be done offline sometimes to bring them up to the cellular platform for the sake of transparency and accountability.
The director also said that GES had impacted well on the lives of farmers in the state in terms of the accessibility to input. ``They are properly covered.''
De Edge Farms
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