Director Urges FCT Farmers To Form Cooperatives

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Mr Salami Abdullahi, Deputy Director, FCT Agricultural Development Project (ADP), has called on farmers in the territory to form cooperatives to enhance access to finance and input delivery services.

He made the call on Thursday in Gwagwalada at a stakeholders’ workshop on the Implementation Strategy for Community Business Net (CBNet).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop was organised by the FCT ADP in collaboration with Agricnat Consult Limited.

Abdullahi said that CBNet was intended to enlighten farmers on the fact that agriculture was a business and should not be seen as avenue for them to be assisted by the government.

“We encourage them to form cooperatives and farmers’ groups to enable them have their internal self help mechanism.

“This is important because it helps in the process of identification and being able to interface effectively with each other.

“It can also help to scale up their productivity and key into the processes they created for themselves in areas of finance and input delivery services,” he said.

Abdullahi said the essence was to create a platform to mentor the farmers on the business aspect of agriculture.

He added that the idea was to create a market place for interchange of technology and services with the farmers to enhance their productivity.
 
“Over the years the banks have developed phobia in lending to farmers because the recovery or the payment system is low and expensive because of the disperse nature of the farmers.

“We want to use this system to create that confidence because we have a one-stop shop to enable them have confidence that somebody is there who knows exactly which farmer is getting what.
Mr Phinehas Uankhoba, a participant at the workshop, called on the government to develop deliberate programme and policies to attract youths to agriculture.

He also called on the government to re-direct its investment in commercial banks for agricultural purposes to Agricultural Banks where agricultural proposals and investments could easily be understood. (NAN)