Agric Ministry To Introduce MDGs Pilot School Feeding Programme In 2014

he Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said on Wednesday that it would soon introduce a pilot school feeding programme under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) projects.
This is contained in a statement issued in Abuja by the ministry’s Director, Information and Protocol, Mr Tony Ohaeri.
The statement quoted the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, as saying this while presenting performance reviews of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)-funded intervention programmes to the House of Representatives Committee on MDGs.
According to the statement, the minister said that the project was aimed at combating malnutrition among children as studies have shown one out of every six children born in Nigeria die before the age of five.
It noted that malnutrition was a major cause of mortality and morbidity among children less than five years of age and pregnant women.
“Extreme poverty and hunger are also silent mental capacity killers among children as an under-fed and malnourished child finds it much harder to learn than his well-fed counterpart.
“To address these problems, the ministry has proposed the introduction of school feeding as a pilot scheme in Sokoto State and the FCT in the 2014 budget proposal’’, the statement said.
It quoted Adesina to have said that the major target of the ministry’s intervention in 2014 would focus on women farmers.
The aim, Adesina said, was to raise the number of women farmers with access to Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme from 600,000 in 2013 to 1.5 million this year.
It stated that records showed that where women accessed support in previous farming seasons, the overall goal of reducing poverty and hunger among farming families was better felt.
The minister decried the lack of a “perfect synchronisation between budget releases and the real farming seasons, leading to non-optimisation of government intervention in climate change, flooding and desertification”.
It stressed the need to increase national irrigation capacity to support increased dry season farming as well as overcoming security challenges in the North-East geopolitical zone.
The statement further quoted Adesina as saying that insecurity had adversely affected productivity and food security in the zone. (NAN)