By Emeka Nwokocha
Against the backdrop of rising food crisis in Nigeria and its attendant harmful impact on the wellbeing of the citizens, stakeholders in the Delta State agriculture sector have called on Delta State government to increase budgetary allocation to agriculture in 2025 to increase food production and promote food security.
The call was made during a one-day State-Level Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2025 Delta State Agriculture Budget organised by Environmental and Rural Mediation Centre (ENVIRUMEDIC) in collaboration with Delta State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MANR), Delta State Budget Committee Group (BCG), and Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), with support from ActionAid Nigeria (AAN).
The event was held on 24th September 2024 at Orchid Hotel, Asaba.
In his introductory speech, Mr. Alex Okekeporo, Program Officer of Scaling Up Public Investment in Agriculture (SUPIA) said the meeting was aimed to bring key stakeholders together to discuss issues around the Delta State agriculture sector and make an input into the 2025 agriculture budget; strengthen citizens participation to ensure the 2025 agriculture budget prioritizes food security and wealth creation; provide stakeholders, especially the smallholder women farmers an opportunity to participate in agriculture policy and budget making processes; advocate for priority budget line items that are pro-poor; and to present the 2024 agriculture budget analysis to stakeholders and generate key budget line items that support smallholder women farmers.
Mr. Alex presented the Delta State 2024 Budget Analysis Report put together by the Delta State Budget Committee Group (BCG). The report stated as follows:
“The budgetary allocations to agriculture sector from 2020-2023 were below 1% of the total budgets of the state, while the allocation to agriculture in 2024 slightly rose to 1.26% of the total budget.
“There is a commendable increase (80%) in the 2024 allocation to Mobilization of Rural Women for Sustainable Agriculture (MORWSA), a women unit in the Ministry of Agriculture.
“In the 2025, N1.050b was allocated to Job Creation Bureau where the Youth Agricultural Enterprise Programme (YAGEP) domicile, but the exact allocation to YAGEP was not spelt out, thus making monitoring of YAGEP’s activities very difficult.
“Credit to farmers in 2024 for purpose of scaling up maize production drastically reduced to N16.4m as against N70m allocated to farmers in 2023.
“There is a slight increase (N100m) in the allocation to the Delta State Procurement Agency in 2024 for provision of inputs and services as against N80m allocated to the agency in 2023; the 2024 allocation (N460m) to Smallholder Farmers to mitigate climate change by promoting Climate Resilient and Sustainable Agriculture (CRSA) is a commendable increase as against N60m allocated to CRSA in 2023.
“The N10m allocated to Agro-Statistics and Data Bank in 2024 for upgrading of Data Bank and Users Proficiency through establishment of Agric ICT Centre for Agricultural data management and information; and the allocation of N274m for carrying out Agricultural Survey are commendable Initiatives of the state government.’
The analysis further noted that despite post-harvest losses in Nigeria put at around 50% there was no budget line in the 2024 budget that addresses post-harvest loss reduction support, thus posing huge threat to growth in agriculture in the state, especially the Smallholder Farmers; and there is a commendable increase in the allocation of N35m to Planning, Research and Statistics (PRS) for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of agriculture projects in 2024 as against N10m allocated to PRS in 2023.
The highpoint of the meeting was issuing of a communique by the stakeholders, stating as follows:
“There is a commendable increase in allocation (N9.2b) to the Deta State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MANR) in 2024, and we commend the Delta State Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for sustaining collaboration with non-government stakeholders in the agriculture sector. Such collaboration will enable innovative contributions that will sustain growth in the agriculture sector.
The communique noted the following observation:
“Nigeria is faced with worst food inflation never experienced in past decades amid a weakening naira, massive post-harvest losses, declining production in the agriculture sector leading to ‘over-reliance’ in expensive imported food, climaxing to all time high inflation reaching 40.87 per cent in June 2024.
“The capacity of smallholder women farmers to contribute effectively to the development of the agriculture sector and improve the wellbeing of the people is challenged majorly by poor access to credit, restricted access to inputs and extension services, ‘poor’ post-harvest losses reduction support such as processing facilities, storage facility, trainings, access to market, lack of access to irrigation facilities, and inadequate access to labour- saving technologies.
“The National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) is designed to tackle challenges confronting the agriculture sector and hampering its contribution to sustainable economic growth.
“Budgetary allocations to agriculture in Delta State had been below 1.0% (from 2020-2023: period under review), a far cry from the 2014 Malabo declaration that recommended at least allocation of 10% of states’ yearly budgets to agriculture.
“As at September 2024, the Delta State Government has not made any release(s) of the agriculture’s capital budget to MANR.
“Nigeria’s agricultural sector largely promotes conventional farming that depends heavily on hazardous agrochemicals which are wrongly applied to crops by farmers with attendant adverse effects on humans, the environment and biodiversity, including loss in foreign exchange occasioned by rejection of exported agricultural products from Nigeria due to low quality.”
The recommendations of the Stakeholders are outlined as follows:
“Delta State Government should increase investment in agriculture to achieve the 10% Malabo declaration, ensure budget is timely passed into law, and there should be timely release of budgetary allocation to the agriculture sector, considering the fact that agricultural activities are time-bound.
“The three tiers of government should commit 10% of their annual budget to agriculture sector to achieve the 10% Malabo Declaration.
“Delta State Ministry of Agriculture and other MDAs should consistently create budget lines to widen the space for stakeholder consultation during budgeting process and ensure implementation of the inputs made by the Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on Agriculture Budget.
“Agriculture Budget should be gender sensitive and prioritize budget line items for implementation of the Nation’s Gender Policy in agriculture geared towards addressing the challenges that affect women farmers, and stop lumping budgets for women farmers with other groups or youths.
“Delta State government should increase investments in the agriculture sector to increase activities of Extension Services, access to credit, women in agriculture, youths in agriculture, appropriate labour-saving techniques, inputs, post-harvest losses reduction support, Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture (CRSA)/Agroecology, Research and Development, Monitoring and Evaluation as well as Coordination.
“Delta State government should set up modular processing and storage facilities in communities to reduce post-harvest loses.
“Delta State government should promote agricultural insurance policies among smallholder farmers and tackle insecurity so that farmers can go to their farms without threat from herders, kidnappers.
“Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources should develop pesticide policies and enact legislation to prohibit use of toxic pesticides, and encourage a shift towards sustainable safe farming methods such as agroecology.
“Delta State government should provide labour-saving technologies for smallholder women farmers cooperatives, youth cooperatives, and people with disabilities cooperatives to improve productivity in the agriculture sector; and “Delta State government should promote private investment in agriculture through incentives and policy reviews.”
Participants at the meeting include: the Delta State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Economic Planning, the State House of Assembly Committee on Agriculture, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation, the Bank of Agriculture, Afritropic Farming and Agro Services Ltd., the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, as well as civil society organisations and the media.
