Food Security: Commercial banks’re frustrating farmers’ productivity Eholor
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By Gabriel Ewepu – Abuja
As Nigeria’s agricultural sector continues to grapple with several challenges to boost food production and attain self-sufficiency along various value chains, the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Izegbuwa Farms Limited, Chief Patrick Eholor, weekend, accused commercial banks as a major frustration to farmers’ productivity.
Eholor made the claim during an interview with Vanguard, where he lamented that most farmers are kept at the level they are due to conditions commercial banks have deliberately given to them, which the nation is yet to attain self-sufficiency along several value chains as the country is yet to be a net exporter of most of her agricultural produce abroad.
What’s new? In 2019, Nigerian authorities launched a ten-year National Livestock Transformation Plan to curtail the movement of cattle, boost livestock production and quell the country’s lethal herder-farmer conflict. But inadequate political leadership, delays, funding uncertainties and a lack of expertise could derail the project. COVID-19 has exacerbated the challenges.
Why did it happen? Violence fuelled by environmental degradation and competition over land has aggravated long-running tensions in the country’s northern and central regions. A surge in bloodshed in 2018 prompted Nigeria’s federal government to formulate a far-reaching set of reforms for the livestock sector.
Why does it matter? The new Plan represents Nigeria’s most comprehensive strategy yet to encourage pastoralists to switch to ranching and other sedentary livestock production systems. Modernising the livestock sector is key to resolving the herder-farmer conflict, which threatens Nigeria’s
• It can only complement commercial farming, says don
Revving up food production amid widespread insecurity in almost all parts of the country has underscored the need to improvise and maximise available spaces at home in villages, towns and cities for backyard farming.
Caused by the Boko Haram terrorism, herder/farmer clashes, ethnic militia attacks, banditry and kidnapping, insecurity has displaced thousands of farming households, communities and neighbourhood cluster processing centres, depleting food availability and pushing inflation to the extreme.
Apart from vegetables, agricultural scientists said various food crops, such as pulses, grains, roots and tubers, poultry and aquaculture could be done either at commercial or subsistence level.
In an interview with
Daily Trust, the minister said henceforth, the ministry would limit its role to monitoring, regulation and supervision.
The minister’s remark was widely interpreted to mean subsidy withdrawal.
At least this was corroborated by the National President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Architect Kabiru Ibrahim, who told
Daily Trust that he was aware that subsidy on fertiliser had been completely removed by the federal government. He added that there was also nothing yet to suggest that state governments would step in to fill the void.
The decision by the federal government is surprising because on December 7, 2020, the minister announced that the ministry had registered and developed the database of five million smallholder farmers for easy targeting with the fertiliser subsidy support through the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI).
Vanguard News
Insecurity: Food shortage looms as Niger farmers flee farms
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By Wole Mosadomi
AS bandits continue to attack and get away with their atrocities without serious challenge from security operatives, many farmers in Niger State have fled their farms and have vowed never to return until security is beefed up around them.
To underscore their seriousness, many of them have already relocated from the farming communities to Minna, the state capital, to escape the brutality of criminals variously described as bandits, kidnappers, hoodlums, cattle rustlers and armed robbers.
Things got to the worst in recent times when the criminals not only attacked and dispossessed the farmers of their possessions, but began to set their houses ablaze as a conquered people, leaving them with nothing to manage their lives with.