The British American Tobacco Nigeria Foundation is seeking improvement in the fortunes of rural farmers in Nigeria.
The Managing Director, BATN, Mr. Chris McAllister, disclosed this at a recent one-day dialogue session organised to review the plight of rural farmers and proffer suggestions on how their lives can be improved through implementation of government policies in the agricultural sector.
At the session themed, “Government Agricultural Policies and the Nigerian Smallholder Farmers,” McAllister said the foundation which was established in 2001 by BAT through a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Federal Government had recently been repositioned and was focusing its strategy on sustainable agriculture in rural communities.
He said, “We aim to do this by supporting rural smallholder farmers and their communities to adopt more productive and sustainable ways of managing and earning livelihoods from natural resources.
“What we are witnessing today is our advocacy platform where we work to facilitate access to policymaking decisions of the smallholder farmers that constitute over 70 per cent of the labour force in the agricultural sector and who produce the bulk of the food we consume as a nation.
“We believe that these disadvantaged groups in the rural areas should be given the opportunity to have their voices heard and participate in designing their future.”
He said to achieve its aim of advocacy for smallholder farmers, the foundation had inaugurated an Executive Working Committee to review the Agricultural Transformation Agenda policy of the Federal Government and recommend ways of achieving conformity with it and ensuring that Nigerian smallholder farmers benefited maximally from its implementation.
A member of the EWC, who is also the Director, Carbon Exchange Trade, Mr. Innocent Azih, said the EWC had been tasked with discovering ways of moving subsistence farmers into the commercial realm by providing market access for them.
He urged greater support from the government, noting that farmers did not receive enough support from state and local governments.
During the dialogue session, farmers from various states of the federation reviewed the ATA policies, the BATNF report and related agricultural policies to identify the challenges of the key players along the value chain in wealth creation and increased productivity.
Topics of discussion included cassava enterprise value chain development, maize/rice enterprise value chain development, palm oil enterprise value chain, livestock/aquaculture, vegetable value chain and the Nigeria incentive-based risk management system for agricultural lending.
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