Kaduna — Small-scale farmers across the country under the aegis of Voices for Food Security (VFS), representing smallholder farmers and organisations have rejected the proposed 2010 budget presented by the President to the bicameral National Assembly.

The farmers who met in Abuja and reviewed the proposed budget, decried it, saying it did not consider women farmers, the global meltdown and over allocation of resources to Federal government agencies to the detriment of state and local governments.In a statement signed by its interim co-ordinator, Osaro Odemwingie, it said, "We reject the allocation of N148, 715,672,952 to the agriculture sector. This is a paltry 3.7 per cent of the total budget of N4, 079,654,724,257, which is far short of the target of 10 per cent recommended by the Maputo Declaration of 2003, to which Nigeria is a signatory."

"A large portion of this allocation will go into recurrent expenditures, which means that little will go into serious project implementation from which the population derive direct benefits.

"Compared with 12 percent for last year, the meagre allocation in this year's budget suggests that the Nigerian authorities no longer believe that food security is an issue. We are also at pains to understand this retrogression in budgetary allocation considering the emergence of agriculture-related challenges, such as avian influenza and swine flu. "

The budget, in its present form, can neither further the cause of the government's 7-Point Agenda, Vision 20-20-20, nor accelerate the progress of the Millennium Development Goals".Frowning at the deterioration of small-scale farmers, the statement added: "We are also concerned that the budget does not significantly address the concerns of smallholder farmers; neither does it adequately address the concerns of women farmers, who constitute about 60 per cent of the labour force in the agriculture and food sector. "We, therefore, call on the National Assembly to direct the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources (FMAWR), within the framework of this budget, to make provision for the strengthening of women in the programmes of the ministry.