By Ginika Okoye
Abuja – The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says it has distributed seeds and fertiliser to about 100,000 households in the North-East in its ongoing wet season programme.
Ms Patrina Pink, the FAO’s Communication and Reporting Officer in Maiduguri, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja on Thursday.
Pink expressed optimism that the move would boost crops’ production in the region.
She also said that with the increased access to farming lands in newly accessible areas in the region, crops and livestock production were expected to increase.
She quoted the June 2018 Displacement Tracking Matrix, as saying that about 1,549,630 people have been returned to their original communities in the North-East.
According to her, returnees, host communities and internally displaced people (IDPs) require urgent support to resume their livelihoods and 80 per cent of which is estimated to be agriculture-based.
“However, access to land still remains a key issue as numerous communities are restricted to only small parcels of land for production and cannot use traditional growing and grazing areas due to lingering security risks.
“In north-eastern Nigeria, farmers often rely on sharecropping (planting on land belonging to others in exchange for a portion of harvests) or rent less than one hectare of land for subsistence agriculture,’’ she said.
The communication officer said the organisation was urgently appealing for about $18 million from donor partners to meet the needs of agro-based households in the North-East.