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From Aniekan Aniekan, Calabar
The Cross River State government is set to digitally map 17,000 farmers, paving the way for thousands of local cocoa, oil palm and coffee farmers to export their produce to the European Union.
The project, tagged the Cross River State Traceability System, is driven by the EU’s stringent Deforestation Regulation, which demands proof of deforestation-free and sustainably produced commodities.
Declaring open a stakeholders’ engagement on the implementation of the scheme, Johnson Ebokpo, the Commissioner for Agriculture, said the registration is in line with the requirements of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
“The European Union Deforestation Recommission now requires that commodities such as cocoa and other forestry products entering the EU market must be proven to be deforestation-free and fully resilient to the environment.
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“Our objective is to establish credible technology that captures farmland data, integrates geolocation mapping, strengthens aggregation structures and positions across the state,” he said.
Williams Archibong, the Director General of the Cross River Geographic Information Agency, said his agency, which is the custodian of all geographic information in the state, is 100 per cent behind the exercise.
Dr Adewole Bello, the Country Field Team Lead of Pula Advisors, said they will collect the EUDR and traceability compliance data on seventeen thousand farmers in seventeen local government areas across the state.
He also disclosed that the Mavuno Tech setup will be deployed for the exercise, and geocoordinate data will be used to precisely identify the exact location of each farm.
