Potato stakeholders call for marketing board, fairness of farmers

The elected leadership of the National Potato Growers, Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria (NAPOGPMAN) Mrs. Christie Sunkur has called for the resuscitation of the marketing board and adequate compensation for potato growers and markers who had recently lost their produce to food stuffs blockage by the Northern Consensus Movement (NCM) allied with the Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria.

Mrs Christie Sunkur disclosed this immediately after she was declared the new and first National President of the National Potato Growers, Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria (NAPOGPMAN) last week in Abuja.

                         

According to her 'The important of marketing board is to regulate prices, a place where you take your produce to, get buyers to buy it. It’s a board where farmers products are taken to, to be marketed outside the country and even within, the board regulates the pricing of the produce, the activities of waste, regulates pest and insect and that is why we are calling on the federal government to bring up a legislation that will help farmers through the creation of the marketing board, which is very possible through their political will power’’

Sunkur also agitated that farmers and food stuff sellers who lost their wares into the crisis of the blockage from the North to the South be well compensated by the government, saying that would help them to quickly return to business.

                        

He also implore that potato preservation should be made available for as long as six months like other crops like yam, corn and even rice saying we are calling on Root and Tuber Research Institute, Umudike to look into the matter because it has the mandate.