Stakeholders Allege Hazardous Input Of Chemicals To Food Crops

National consultative stakeholders of the 2024 Agriculture budget have raised the alarm over proliferation and wrong application of hazardous chemicals on food crops by Nigerian farmers in a bid to stem the tide of Nigeria’s food export vulnerability at global markets.

This is just as the consultative stakeholders declared state of emergency on the wrong usage of pesticides on food crops by farmers while affirming that Nigeria losses about $362.5 million yearly in terms of foreign exchange to the ban of exportation of beans in the last eight years which they said had plummeted export revenue in the country’s economy.

The stakeholders noted that this has created loss of export revenue to Nigeria food rejection at global market, thereby leading to loss of revenue, unemployment and deprived funding of major agricultural projects and access to micro credit to farmers in the country.

In his address in the forum organized by ActionAid Nigeria, Oxfam Nigeria, ONE, Ministry of Budget and National Planning, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Department of Agriculture & Rural Development, the ECOWAS COMMISSION held in Lagos, Budget Officer, Federal ministry of Agric and Rural Development, Okoso Oyere urged the federal and state governments to drive the implementation of budgetary allocation to scale up public investment in agriculture.

Oyere stressed that the agricultural sector has the full potential to pull nations out from subnational poverty levels.

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He said the late release of budgetary allocation into the agricultural sector has impeded the capacity of federal and state governments to drive socio-economic development in the country while positing that although the budget has not been fully implemented it will run concurrently with the 2023 budget appropriation.

Also speaking, National President, Small Scale Holders Farmers Association of Nigeria, Mary Afam said, the team of consultancy will handhold the cooperatives to have access to credit facilities, extension insurance, existing CBN Agricultural credit facilities through preparing their business proposals, among others.