Better days are here for farmers in rural areas and this is because the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has pledged assistance towards boosting their yield as part of its social responsibility roles.
Development Finance Officer, CBN, Ado-Ekiti Branch, Mr. Sowunmi Sogunle, disclosed this on Monday during a five-day training on Agricultural Value Chains Upgrade Services for National, Regional and Global Competitiveness.
At the training, organized by the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, (NIRSAL), an offshoot of CBN, Sogunle said the problems facing the average Nigerian farmer in the remote village, was of paramount concern to the bank.
Sogunle said: “NIRSAL plays a key role in CBN intervention s such as the Anchor Borrowers Programme which focused at small holder farmers in rural communities
“This is being done in order to boost their production, create employment and boost the Gross Domestic Product
“NIRSAL, through us, has done quite a lot for the agricultural Value-Chain in Nigeria by reaching to the rural communities to create awareness on agricultural practice and opportunities, and this has helped reduce financial exclusion in their areas.”
The Project Monitoring Reporting and Remediation Officer of NIRSAL in Ekiti state, Mr. Ayo Ashade, in his welcome address, observed with regrets that principal among factors destroying farmers’ fortunes in the country was poor attitude of consumers to foods grown by local farmers, especially local rice.
He enjoined farmers to cultivate habit of looking inwards by forming themselves into groups or cooperatives so as to benefit more from government programmes and policies.
According to him, the goal of NIRSAL was to trigger an agricultural industrialization process through increased production and processing of greater part of what is produced on the farm to boost economic earnings.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
