Opportunity in agriculture is under-ultilized says Daula boss

Chairman, Daula farm Ltd, Alhaji Hakimi Jiga

 

If you are one of those who do not really believe in government policy supporting big commercial farmers saying it is their business, then the view of the Chairman of Daula Farm Limited, Alhaji Hakimi Jiga popularly called Seriki Nouma of Kebbi state may make you change the thought.

The journey road from Birin Kebbi to Daula farm  in Gidan Batture, Tsamiya Badudu Local Government will take you three hours with constant 120 km/hour speed of a well-maintained Toyota Hilux. That was exactly the journey we took in company of Chairman, Alhaji Jiga who strongly advocated that commercial farmers should be effectively assisted in the food security programme of government aiming at checkmating import bills just as it is done in the advanced countries of the world.

Taking us round one of his big farm sites at Tsamiya where rice harvest had just taken place, he said the expectation of any farmer from government is that will bring down the cost of agro inputs, mechanization, provision of good rural feeder roads for evacuation of produce to the market or processing centres, adding  that availability and affordability are always challenges as cost of labor in agriculture is very killing when compared with the profit margin.

Alhaji Jiga pointed out that a lot of encouragement should be given to commercial farmers by way of giving them job order for grains supply like maize, millet, sorghum and rice production, but disagreed with the idea of giving the direct job to the middlemen as contracts thereby resulting in exploitative pricing of the produce from farmers in order to make execessive profit that should have gone to farmers directly. 

This, according to him, would have assisted in many ways as “we clear and make access road by ourselves, drill bore holes for drinking water for people in the villages and also perform some other social responsibility like giving part of the produce as food to many and in the mosques.”

He canvassed  that government intervention in terms of agro inputs must not be limited to small scale farmers saying: “ government is not buying from us the commercial farmers. They give to relatives who will come and exploit us in terms of pricing despite the cost of inputs in the market places. Inputs like fertilizers, herbicides, improved seeds and tractors are very expensive in the market. Tractor should be well subsidized with duty free and other farming tools. Government should provide efficient infrastructure like health services, water, light and road which we normally construct by ourselves”.

He however advocated that government should take the issue of flood control very serious saying the negative impact of it, year after year, calls for intervention and proactive solutions as many crops especially rice were lost during the last occurrence in the state saying this may have affected negatively, many farmers’ profit as the case may be.

On recession, he pointed out that more funds should be allocated to agriculture just like it is done in Thailand saying: “honestly to overcome recession, all we have to is going back to agriculture like Thailand. Less than 30% arable land is used in farming and the bulk are virgin lands. Government must take agriculture very serious with subsidy provision to the sector more than any other. There is good market for farmers and the price of food will still go up except there are provisions for massive acceleration production”.