Farmers call for more govt support

Farmers

*Partners Oyaoya for increased market

Farmers under the aegis of Commodity Association for Zero Hunger have called for more support from the Federal Government to enable massive production of food across the country. The call was made during its recently held meeting in Abuja.

The leaders of the commodity association disclosed that government had only been paying lip services in the area of its support to farmers which are fast making most farmers leave farming for other unreasonable occupations and which might reduce food production in the coming years.

Despite the existing challenges, participants further identified that agricultural sector has a number of opportunities including availability of private sector and its involvement in sector; unleashing of potential for irrigation farming, availability of farmers groups existence of favorable policies and strategies etc., which if utilized effectively would lead to increased production and productivity and thus act as a basis for poverty alleviation in rural areas.

The chairman Potato Association of Nigeria, Mr. Daniel Okafor expressed dissatisfaction over the challenges often faced by Nigerian farmers despite the importance of agriculture to reviving the country’s economy.

He lamented that not only are farmers at the mercy of buyers of farm produces, but are often faced with post-harvest losses in terms of perishable produces, which government is slow on making effort on helping farmers out in achieving their dream in making the country a food self-sufficient nation.

Okafor pointed that the food commodities such as rice, garri, fish among others should be purchased directly from local farmers rather than importing from other countries. His words: “Since government unveiled plans to embark on free meal for schools, which also reflected in the 2016 budget, government should ensure school proprietors, buy food commodities directly from the farmers. Rice, garri, fishes for instance, should be purchased directly from the local farmers rather than patronizing Malaysia, among other rice exporting nations.

His words: “No doubt, this will show seriousness of the government to revive the agricultural sector as booster of our economy. I know it is better we get direct information from the farmers present  which is the essence of this meeting but permit me to list a few which include post-harvest losses, whereby about 40 percent of farm harvests get lost to lack of storage facility. More importantly, is the infestation of pests as well as lack of easy access to finance such as soft loan and market. It is in this respect, Commodity Association of the Zero Hunger held the meeting to draw close markets for its farmers.”

The Chief Executive officer, OyaOya, Mr. Khalil Haliluan, an enterprise based on user friendly online platform designed to connect customers to vendors within close proximity for easy and secured demand transactions disclosed that buying and selling must be simple and easy without stress or necessarily be time consuming.

Haliluan promised that with the new alignment with farmers’ association, his company would do all the heavy-lifting of the agricultural produce to the right markets thereby lifting the burden of transportation from farmers.  

He added that OyaOya will bring a highly innovative and confident team together to make sure that the commodities are delivered with value and quality, when and where they are needed with no hassle.

He further stressed that his company’s technology has brought three essential components together in a seamless and efficient flow, a market place for vendors to present their products, customers to select a product and an escrow account to ensure quality of service.