In a bid to curtail harvest losses due to climate change and enhance sustainability and food security, the federal government has expedited action to incorporate the Agricultural Insurance Scheme into the National Agricultural Growth Scheme and Agro-Pocket Program, (NAGS-AP).
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, (FMAFS) Dr Aliyu Abdullahi disclosed this during the Agricultural Insurance Train-the-Trainer Workshop in Abuja.
Abdullahi said the development was to protect the investment and interventions being made by the government and the financing partner, the African Development Bank (AfDB), in addressing the sustainability and security of domestic food systems.
He said these risks have become central issues affecting the government, financiers, and beneficiary farmers, who stand to lose the most from seasons of bad harvest, citing the 2024 ginger blight crisis.
Also, Abdullali warned that such adverse conditions could wipe out investments and the labour invested in the program leading to significant food price inflation currently witnessed.
“it was estimated that Nigerian ginger farmers incurred losses amounting to N12bn due to the catastrophic blight epidemic that decimated their crops in 2023.
“That is some food for thought and something that we all have to bear in mind; as we are at all times one or two bad harvest seasons away from losing our food supplies” he said.
The minister revealed that only a few of the ginger farmers who took the insurance protection received monetary compensation for their harvest losses while uninsured counterparts had to dip into their meagre savings to be able to continue farming.
Speaking further he said that 397 LGAs out of the total 774 LGAs in Nigeria, representing over 51 per cent of the country’s farming areas, are at risk of flooding.
He said, “This necessity has driven the Ministry to establish a joint working committee, comprising representatives from the NAGS secretariat of the ministry, NAIC, and Pula Advisors.
“This committee has been tasked with creating a practical framework to achieve a national Agricultural Insurance scheme for the NAGS program poised to arrest the situation through the deployment of climate-smart agriculture for the establishment of a resilient food security system because climate-smart agriculture remains the only means for adapting to climate change”.
The National Project Coordinator, NAGS-AP Mr. Isiaku Buba noted that the scheme designed to broaden its operational horizon will cater to and accommodate the interests of the farmers and other relevant stakeholders operating along the production line of the chain.