Owing to the Federal Government’s desire to diversify the economy, farmers in Abuja have called for more allocation of lands to enable massive production of food.

 They made this call during the Avian Influenza (AI) sensitization campaign and interactive session organized by the African Centre for Food, Agriculture and Sustainable Development (AFRI-CASD) at Jikwoyi Phase 4, Karu Local Government Area, Abuja.

 

Speaking on behalf of the farmers, a Former Deputy Director Pest Control at the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Joseph Olorunda affirmed that “large scale farming, which will be beneficial to the country, there is need for the government to support farmers on acquisition of land for this purpose.”

According to him, most of the land used for farming in the nation’s capital is either on lease or borrowed.

The Executive Director, Afri-CASD, Mr Bamidele Adanikin, expressed dissatisfactions over the challenges often faced by Nigerian farmers despite the importance of agriculture to reviving the country’s economy.

He explained that not only are farmers at the mercy of buyers of farm produces, but are often faced with post-harvest losses in terms of perishable produces.

Adanikin stressed the need for the establishment of agriculture commodity marketing board by the government, so as to reward the labour of farmers.

On Federal Government’s free meal scheme for schools, Adanikin, called for a policy that will ensure that food commodities are gotten directly from local farmers.

He added that the food commodities such as rice, garri, fishes among others should be purchased directly from local farmers rather than importing these from other countries.

His words: “Since government unveiled plans to embark on free meal for schools, which also reflected in the 2016 budget, government should ensure school proprietors, buy food commodities directly from the farmers. Rice, garri, fishes for instance, should be purchased directly from the local farmers rather than patronizing importers of Rice from Malaysia, among other rice exporting nations.

“No doubt, this will show seriousness of the government to revive the agriculture sector as booster of our economy.

“I know it is better we get direct information from the farmers present , which is essence of this meeting but permit me to list a few which include post-harvest losses, whereby about 40 percent of farm harvests get lost to lack of storage facility.

“More importantly, is the infestation of pests as well as lack of easy access to finance such as soft loan. It is in this respect, Afri-CASD felt the need to organize this meeting.” Adanikin added.