How missionary farmers have been contributing to food security as association

FCT Coordinator/ President Founder of Missionary Farmers’

The Christians faith is repositioning members towards using agriculture for more earnings and ensuring food security according to the FCT Coordinator/ President Founder of Missionary Farmers’ Cooperative Society (MFCS) Pastor Akin Davids Tinuala who took us round their farms.

Pastor Tinuala said in an effort to boost the standard of living of the faithful especially the missionary workers in the villages where there are enough land to farm as necessitated the establishment of the association saying they have been getting government support in terms of loans and inputs as a group to augment living standard farmers.

According to him “ what are missionary are taking as salary is very small and most of them have land that they are already farming, and this gives us a concern of organizing them into an economic group so that they will be able to attract government support in terms of inputs and financial loan. By the grace of God we have been able to secure for each of our members a soft loan of N150, 000.00 from BOA for about 34 of them to cultivate improved quality vitamin A cassava from IITA through the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. As we have individual farm land of members, we also have corporate cassava farm of about 10,000 hectares in Gaba village around Bwari area of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Also we are expanding our membership support to other interested individual farmers within and all states of the Federation. Our other members are into Ugu, okro and waterleaf vegetable”

Speaking on the re payment of about N5.1 million BOA loan, the President of the Missionary farmers’ cooperative said that as a registered Christian cooperative with integrity “ our members are already paying back  since they have six month moratorium and one year to pay back at a single digit loan of 5% despite that the we are yet to harvest”

 On FMARD cottage industry Pastor Tinuala said that “we are part of the cottage programme of FMARD as we attended the meeting organized in Moor plantation at Ibadan and we have applied for the cassava processing cottage and we have paid the counterpart fund of N500, 000.00 to get a grant of N10millions while beneficiary will only paid back N4.5 million. Allocation has been given to us and already waiting for Bank of Industry to come with their builders to start work on the processing factory” 

Pastor Tinuala enjoined all other big churches to encourage their members into farming saying this alleviate poverty in the country adding the area of white collar job is gone, a position that was buttressed a member of the association by Mrs Rebecca Irobo who proudly said farming has helped a lot as there is always food to eat through the year without buying anything.

Mrs. Rebecca Irobo in her chat with Food Farm News said she diverted to farming based on high cost of shop rent saying “when I came to Abuja in 1999, I have nothing to do as I was into fashion but I cannot afford the high cost of shop rent , so I diverted to farming . Today in my family, we do not lack anything from January to December apart from meat, I have yam, beans, garri, beans , ugu vegetable and fish. I have goat but I have stopped poultry because of space”