Agric production has worsened in recent time, says farmers’ boss

The president of Small-scale Women Farmers' Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON), Mrs. Mary Afan has said that with the current state of Nigeria’s agriculture, the country has receded ten years backward. She made the assertion in an interview with FoodFarmNews in Abuja.

She noted that the nonchalant attitude of those in government, the recent covid-19 pandemic, natural disasters like flood and drought that had affected production for year 2020, are all responsible for the present unhealthy state of the sector.

The woman-farmer disclosed that in as much as her group would want to help the smallholder farmers “we don't have the resources, while the government that has the wherewithal does not want to give the farmers the support to increase production.”

She lamented: “look, when they were giving out palliatives, they came to mop up food from communities.  We removed all our crops and sold them out, so that they could share it as palliatives to people in the city, and expected that during the rainy season government would give out palliatives to farmers to increase production, knowing well that we have removed our food from the reserve to sell out, but we didn't get anything. And if there is any year that we have had high cost of inputs like fertilizers, seeds and herbicide, it is this year.”

The SWOFON boss who listed the challenges faced by farmers during the season as lack of access to subsidised fertilizer and having to buy a bag of the commodity at the rate of 18,000 naira in the open market; drought, which came in form of four weeks without rain; armyworm infestation which destroyed a lot of the farms; and flooding which washed away the farms, said “the government is aware of this, and they've done nothing.”

She continued: “What are we doing for the farmers? Nothing. What they normally do is, to target their support to the ‘political’ farmers who collect the inputs, go into the market and sell it. Meanwhile, we produce the food for the nation and yet we get no inputs, and government knows that there is food crises currently, despite that, have you seen the 2021 proposed budget for Nigeria?  Is there any attempt for them to increase production?  They don't have the intentions to make the sector work, likely because those in government get their food easily and do not know how the farmer suffered to produce the food, so whether a mudu of rice goes for N10,000 they can afford it, they have the money,  but what happens to the person that cannot afford N10,000 in a month,  where he has families to feed and school fees to pay and you don't have food?”