Stakeholders in agricultural sector have called on the Federal Government to make sure that the next budget cycle and following ones are gender sensitive and responsive, through implementation of National Gender Policy in Agriculture that addresses specific challenges affecting women farmers different from men.
This appeal was made during the National Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2024 Agriculture Budget, held in Lagos, noting that agricultural funding should focus on getting consultants or consultancy firms to support women, youth and farmers living with disability, to navigate the too cumbersome access to credit in the country.
They also called on the government to stop umping up budget for women farmers and other groups such as youths, while advising state ministries of agriculture to start creating a yearly budget line to strengthen access to credit.
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According to the stakeholders, the consultancy firm will help cooperatives to access existing agricultural credit facilities provided by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and others.
The advocates lamented that the data collected through the Non-State Actors (NSAs) Value Addition Biennial Review Toolkit (VABKIT), reflect that smallholder women currently have only 26 per cent access to processing facilities; 18 per cent to storage facilities; 21 per cent access to off takers/access to markets and 10 per cent to transportation for agricultural produce.
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They went further to state that smallholder women farmers have only two per cent access to agricultural insurance, while 30 per cent women have control over land, adding that only 10 per cent are engaged in land governance discussions, out of 60 per cent women that have access to land.
