Food crisis: ActionAid seeks emergency funds for agric

The ActionAid Nigeria (AAN) has urged the federal government to create separate agriculture emergency fund outside the 2023 Agriculture budget.

The organization, at a media briefing it organized in Abuja yesterday, in collaboration with Small-scale Women Farmers Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON) and CAADP Non-State Actors (CNC), said the fund would avert looming food crisis in the country.

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The Food and Agriculture Programme Coordinator, ANN, Azubuike Nwokoye, decried the low budgetary allocation of N228bn.

He said this only represented 1.11 percent to the agricultural sector out of the N20.5trn 2023 national budget.

The coalition’s call is coming amidst the ripple effect of devastating flooding across the country; ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the COVID-19 pandemic, rising prices of farm inputs, post-harvest losses and other challenges bedeviling the nation’s food production sector and the palpable fears of food crisis in the country by 2023.

Nwokoye said though N228.4bn was budgeted for the sector, its purchasing power was about N189.2bn due to the current inflation rate.

He said to achieve the investment impact in monetary terms, the gap of N39bn must be filled either by providing additional budgetary resources or reducing inflation to the barest minimum.