Senate Passes Bill To Establish Agric Devt Fund

The Senate on Wednesday passed for the third reading a Bill seeking to establish a National Agricultural Development Fund.

The report on the Bill entitled: “National Agricultural Development Fund (Establishment) Bill, 2021” was presented by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Abdullahi Adamu.

According to him, the Bill seeks to promote and provide for finance to support agriculture development to ensure food production and food security in Nigeria.

According to him, the Bill seeks to, among others, “Provide finance for the implementation of policies and to strengthen agricultural institutions’’.

“It also seeks to encourage donor institutions to provide funding for the agriculture sector to ensure increased food production.”

He noted that it was acknowledged that the major bane of agricultural sector in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa was inadequate funding.

“To date, Nigeria is yet to fully implement the 2003 Maputo Declaration on Agriculture requiring states, parties to allocate ten per cent of its national budget for agricultural development.

“If this was done, agriculture research and development, food production and food security would have witnessed a major leap,” he said.

He said the Bill, therefore, showed that more fund would meet these requirements, among others.

“With government’s commitment to make agriculture the mainstay of our economy, it is only right to make enabling laws for the purpose of providing sustainable funding for agriculture development in Nigeria,” the lawmaker said.