As an organization working to eradicate poverty, promoting social justice and gender equality, and a group working on budgets and budgetary process, Participatory Development Alternatives (PDA), Smallholder Women Farmers and Budget Committee Group with support from Actionaid through the Scaling up Investment Public Agriculture (SUPIA) have successfully organised a -day Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on the 2024 Agriculture Budget at San Diego Hotel, Abakaliki on 26th July, 2023.
PDA, deemed it fit to draw the attention of the State Government to the paltry allocations to agriculture in the State and the poor/lack of participation of smallholder women farmers in the budgetary processes in the State. However, Smallholder farmers, who are producers of over 80% of the food consumed in Nigeria, are not currently involved in the agriculture budgeting processes as there is no formal strategy for their involvement resulting in untapped potential of the farmers (especially women and youths), and the attendant low productivity.
During the analysis of the 2023 agriculture budget of Ebonyi State, and Stakeholders consultative meetings, participants through the media made the following recommendations for the subsequent agriculture budget
There should be political will to allocate at least 10% of annual budgets and actuals of revenues to the agriculture sector to increase the realization of the Maputo and Malabo benchmarks for agricultural investment. Additionally, given the time bound nature of farming activities, agricultural budgets must be released on time and fully to enable farmers plant in due season.
The 2024 and subsequent years agriculture budget should be gender sensitive and responsive by providing line items that address specific challenges that affect women farmers different from men as well as creating budget lines for women farmers and other groups such as youths.
Government should provide post-harvest reduction support with focus on processing facilities and storage facilities
The State Ministry of Agriculture should create budget line strengthening access to credit
The stakeholders’ consultative meeting should be taken as an integral part of the budgeting process across all the MDAs in the agriculture sector both at State and LGA levels, as it is productive, and allows stakeholders to make inputs in the pre-budget
There is a huge gap in extension agent – farmer ratio, which has a limiting effect on technology transfer to farmers; concentration should be on farmers field school and demonstration plots, mobility etc.