Nigeria Content Online

Experts have said
the agricultural policies of the states and federal government are not
having the expected impact on the productivity of farmers in the
country.

Ojobe Atuluku, a
consultant for Oxfam, a non-governmental organisation working with
other partners to find lasting solution to poverty, said smaller
farmers are being marginalised in the various policies that should have
impacted positively on their enterprises.

Ms. Atuluku, who
was engaged by Oxfam to assess the impact of the NGO’s farming
programme in the past one year, said the government will make progress
in its quest to achieve food security if small scale farmers were given
more consideration.

While presenting
her report at the annual monitoring and evaluation meeting of Oxfam and
partners in Abuja yesterday, Ms Atuluku said, “I have been in the field
looking at Oxfam’s work in the past year, and by field I mean the
states of Oyo, Ekiti, Nassarawa, Plateau, Benue, Katsina and FCT. And
the focus has been interacting with small scale farmers that Oxfam has
been working with as well as the partner organisations in those
states… it is so clear that small scale farmers find agricultural
policies very unfriendly.

“They complain that
they are invisible within agricultural policy, that it is not possible
for them to benefit from those policies. The story across the country
surrounds issues of input, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides,
tractors, credit. They do not have access to all these and so the
challenge becomes: why is this the case even as the federal and state
government are placing a lot of emphasis on agricultural issues?”
Difficulty accessing funds

Ms. Atuluku said small scale farmers also have difficulty accessing funds provided by the government.

“I will give an
example. The federal government came up with the scheme that provides
N200 billion for farmers. N40 bilion of this has been set aside for
small scale farmers, but the conditions are that you need to provide
collateral and it cannot be the poor farmers’ land in the bush, but a
piece of land that worth something. And you have to access the
collateral through a commercial bank. All these are conditions that the
small scale farmers have no clue or access to,” she said. She therefore
called on decision makers, the legislature, the executive and others to
address the problems in the policy implementation and to find out why
policies targeting smaller-scale farmers are not reaching the target
group.

She said Oxfam has
supported the farmers with capacity building in terms of farming
techniques in order to increase yield. But in some states, fertilizer
is unavailable and the farmers do not have enough money to hire
tractors.

“They are still
using crude implement. That is what we saw in the fields and it seems
as if the high level attention being paid to agriculture in the country
it is still yet to go down to small scale farmers. If we are serious
about food security in this country the government needs to change the
way it actually implements the policies it has put in place,” she said.

Validating the report

Ajayeoba Ayodeji,
the Campaign Manager of Oxfam said the meeting was an avenue to
validate the report of the consultant and plan ahead for effective
delivery of their mandate. He said the efforts are geared towards
improving the productivity of small scale farmers and engaging the
government for improved agricultural governance while providing
opportunities for women that will help reduce inequality and poverty
and support Nigeria attain food sufficiency.

One of the farmers, Amina Bala Jibrin from Bauchi State, said Oxfam programmes have impacted them a great deal.

“Oxfam constituted the voices for food security and they want the
small scale farmers to be heard. It is a very good idea because farmers
in the rural areas are not given proper attention. What is due to them
is not given to them. They do not benefit from inputs because it has to
go through other channels before it comes to the small scale farmer it
is gone. We are the voiceless,” she said.