South Sudan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Cooperative and Rural Development says it has set plans to distribute farm inputs and equipment to farmers across the country to boost productivity.

Speaking to reporters in Juba on Friday, the Undersecretary in charge of agriculture, cooperative and rural development, Mathew Gordon Udo said the ministry had presented a plan of over 3 billion US dollars to the Council of Ministers and it was approved.

Gordon pointed out that they are ready to implement their plan with help from the World Bank and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

 “The Ministry of Agriculture is at an advantage point because recently they have concluded an agreement with the World Bank which has picked the ministry of agriculture as one of the institutions which they are going to support. The ministry of agriculture should take an opportunity and try to present their requirement to the World Bank so that they can take it as a priority to be implemented,” Gordon said.

The undersecretary further said they plan to distribute seeds and other farm tools to the states. “We already planned for distributing the inputs for production to farmers in all the states. Then even provision of fuel to the farming groups and the lubricants as well as visiting all the key national schemes to see the preparations that we have made so far. But unfortunately getting resources from the ministry of finance was not in place but this cannot prevent us,” he concluded.

Agriculture in South Sudan largely remains at subsistence level with average field sizes of two feddans/acres per household, crop yields being very low: hardly one ton per feddan/acre due to the use of poor quality seeds, tools and agronomic practices.