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Showing posts with label rural access roads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rural access roads. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Access roads, bane of post harvest loss in agriculture



Anthony Nwakaegho /NaijaAgroNet

The huge deficiency in rural access roads had been described as the bane of post- harvest loss in agriculture in Nigeria, NaijaAgroNet reports.

This was the nexus drawn by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina who was represented by the Director of Rural Development, Azeez Muyiwa at the recent launch of second Rural Access and Mobility Project RAMP -2 in Abuja, stressing that this has resulted in low farm gate prices which is put at about 20 per cent annually.

He said that the country’s focus to treat agriculture as a business would not be achieved unless intensive efforts were made to tackle issues such as access and mobility, particularly the link between the urban and rural areas where majority of the population who are mostly farmers reside.

In order for the full benefits of the agricultural transformation agenda to be realised, he said the ministry in collaboration with the World Bank developed a rural travel and transport policy as one of its intervention strategies to addressing the inadequacy and deteriorating state of rural transport infrastructure in the country.

The World Bank Country Representative, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, said agriculture as the backbone of Nigeria’s rural economy could be accelerated by improving roads that are essential to increased productivity in agriculture, access to health as well as education for the rural communities.

 The Country Director of French Development Agency, Hubert Dognin, said that special emphasis need to be  placed on the sustainability of the road investments through adequate maintenance in partnership with the states in Nigeria.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that the RAMP-2 that is set to aid access and mobility between the urban and rural areas will close in December 2018.



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pix: Minister of Agriculture & Rural Dev. Dr Akinwumi Adesina