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Actionaid Nigeria, an international non-governmental
organisation, wants the federal government to give more attention to female
farmers in Nigeria.

Ifeoma Charles- Monwuba, its Deputy Country Director, made this
request when the group paid a visit to Sheik Abdallah, the Minister of
Agriculture, in his office in Abuja on Wednesday.

The group said that women make up a large percentage of farmers
in Nigeria but are often marginalised because they do not have easy access to
credit and other inputs necessary for effective and more profiting farming
activity.

Mrs Charles-Monwuba said, “Women farmers in Nigeria deserve
greater attention in order for food security, and right to be insured due to
the fact that they are the main producers of food. Despite their enormous
contribution to food production, they have less access to extension services, credit
and fertilizers than men do.”

Women feed Nigeria

Further, she said, “Women farmers constitute at least 70 per
cent of the workforce feeding Nigeria and we want the government to ensure they
are able to produce food at sustainable level, and not only feeding the nation
but move them out of poverty. That would require that these women have access
to the credit facility they need to buy farming inputs, that they have access
to agricultural extension workers that support them and provide them the technical
support and also be sure of access and guaranteed market for their products.

She added that in Africa, women farmers’ plots have often been
found to have 20 to 40 per cent lower yield than those run by men, and these
differences arise from inequalities in agricultural inputs, arguing that if
women receive the same level of education, experience, and farm inputs as men,
they can increase their yields.

“Women in agriculture face a lot of challenges in food
production processes in Nigeria, and chief among this is their lack of access
to one of the primordial factors of production: land. Women own less than one
per cent land on which they farm on, despite their high level of contribution.
This implies that almost all farmlands they farm on belong to men. This lack of
control over land they cultivate means that women cannot use land as they
require, and this limits their agricultural activities which results to low
level of production leading to hunger in families who cannot afford to buy food
especially during pre-harvest period,” she said.

The group, therefore, called on the ministry of agriculture and
other agencies of government to support women farmers to have a more secure
tenure and increased access to land. “Government should eliminate all policies
and practices that discriminate against women in matters of land rights,” she
said.

Mrs Charles-Monwuba also wants the federal government to keep
its promise to increase spending on agriculture if it is desirous of halving
hunger in Nigeria by 2010.

The minister of agriculture pointed out that whatever happens in
the agricultural sector affects everybody, saying that the issue of credit is
crucial to farmers both male and female.

“We will fashion out modalities to ensure that credit gets to the people,”
he said.