AFAN solicits support

The All Farmers Association of Nigeria ( AFAN) has asked for the support of other partners in the sector.

This was stated in a speech delivered by the Vice President of AFAN, Chief Sir. Daniel Okafor on the occasion of the first Federal Capital Territory ( FCT) farmers' day celebration held last week at Tamara garden, Abuja.

Okafor enjoined stakeholders  in the agricutural space to support AFAN activities towards ensuring food security in the country.

Meanwhile, the AFAN president Arch. Kabir Ibrahim in his press statement made available last September 29, 2024 titled " The Tragedy Impacting the Global Food System: Nigeria Can Only Mitigate Imminent Hunger Catastrophe Through Focused Agriculture and Sustainable Agricbusiness" pointed the need for support to Agricutural sector as well.

Kabiru said that the current level of food inflation predicated on low mechanization,difficulty in access to credit, affordable seeds, non access to manageable and ready-to-go transportation, inadequate smart agriculture, insecurity and lately flooding as well as drought in some places were all great hindrance to food productivity.

The farmers' president stressed that all supportive effort of the government to small scale farmers must be transparently done, saying that " Various efforts such as the importation of some food items for a given period of time in defined quantities, support to SHFs(small holder farmers ) or SSPs( Small Scale Producers) and distribution of palliatives and agricultural inputs are clearly work in progress, and should be implemented transparently and dispassionately for them to really impact the food system towards bringing  down prices"

He however lamented that the usual harvest season that should brings about low prices may not come through due to the devastating flooding all over the country this year.

The statement reads further " The most probable respite can come by encouraging seamless agribusiness practices through AfCFTA and other available windows. The big players in Agribusiness as well as small scale entrepreneurs should be incentivized to get credit and seamless finance in order to enable them to scale their activities of buying grains and other food items from our farmers at reasonable prices so that food items will be readily available and fairly affordable in the regular markets.

"Palliative and wholesale or full scale importation of food into the nation cannot make Nigeria food secure, and the effort in that regard will forever remain stop-gap or palliative "