Mr Felix Kehis, the Federal Director of Agriculture in Delta, said on Friday that 204,000 farmers have so far registered under the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) since the inception of the programme three years ago.
Kehis told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Asaba that the programme targets 150,000 farmers this year to acess the inputs.
NAN reports that the GES is the flagship programme of the Federal Government under the Agricultural transformation Agenda (ATA) through which genuine farmers are registered and allocated inputs of seeds and fertiliser via an electronic platform known as the e-wallet, by private agro-dealers.
Farmers received text messages of the input allocation on via mobile phones.
According to the him, a total of 58 redemption centres have been designated across the state.
“We require a minimum of 3,000 registered farmers for a place to qualify to be a redemption centre.
“In Delta North Senatorial District, particularly, Ika North East where we have 24,000 registered farmers, we put in place six redemption centres to accommodate the farmers.”
Kehis said that the feedback received from the field was encouraging and indicated that the April 28 GES roll-out in the state was successful.
He said that his office employed the services town criers and the media to sensitise farmers and encourage them to go out and redeem their inputs from the closest redemption centres.
“We employed the use of town criers and the media to create the awareness and majority of the farmers received the text messages on their phones.
“We are monitoring the distribution process to ensure that the farmers receive the inputs on time.
“The inputs are the same two bags of fertilisers and 10 kgs of maize or with 12.5 kgs of rice for each farmer.
He, however, added that the bags of maize and rice were no longer free but now attracted a token cost of N200 and N250 respectively, to be paid by the farmer at the redemption centres.
He urged all farmers in the state to key into the programme in order to benefit from the Federal Government’s agricultural support programme, adding that the programme would help to develop a new culture in fertiliser use by the farmers.
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